DYLAN by David J. Mather (Chile) — A story of relationships

A novel

Dylan
David J Mather (Chile 1968 – 70)
Peace Corps Writers, 2024
306 pages
$14.95 (paperback), $7.99 (Kindle)

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Donald MacGregor is a writer who values his freedom above all else. He wants no responsibilities.  He travels to the quiet Honduran Bay Islands to finish writing a blockbuster novel.  On New Year’s Eve, however, he makes a big mistake with his beautiful neighbor and a year later a black baby boy is delivered to his doorstep.  The baby’s eyes are as blue as Donald’s.

 Both commercial fiction and family saga as well as multicultural, Dylan will appeal to anyone who has raised or tried to raise a child. It is a novel of 91,000 words about a white man raising his black son alone on an island off Honduras. Several islanders become surrogate family and rally around Donald and his son Dylan. 

However, Donald’s father, James MacGregor, is shocked. A highly successful Florida businessman, James wants nothing to do with his black bastard grandson and cuts off all ties with Donald.  Donald struggles financially until his novel Futaleufú is published and his screenplay sold.

The years pass with Donald’s stormy relationship with his father, a savage hurricane, Donald’s love affairs with his literary agent and an Argentine starlet, Donald’s success as a writer, and Dylan getting unfairly kicked out of a New England boarding school by a racist headmaster. However, all of these are secondary to the close relationship between Donald and Dylan, and the tumultuous relationship between Donald and his father.  Consequently, the heart of the novel is the two different father-son relationships. One is heartwarming throughout, whereas the other has to go full circle to mend. The novel’s conclusion is bittersweet.  

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This is David Mather’s eight novel, all published by Peace Corps Writers.