The first chapter opens with a shock; the protagonist,
Kirk Adams, who immediately draws the reader into his
first-person account, commits murder in an angry
drug-induced stupor. The unforgivable sin has been
committed. As the murderer flees from the scene of the
crime, he loses control of his car and plunges into a
ravine. When he awakens, he finds that he is no longer in
California; he is in Ata, an island inhabited by simple,
wise natives who live by the dictates of their dreams. In
fact, Kirk soon learns that his arrival had been foreseen
in a dream.
      The author portrays Kirk as a modern barbarian in the
presence of simple wisdom. Resisting all efforts to heal
his ailing spirit, the recalcitrant protagonist violates the
island's principles, and nearly brings the people to their
knees. Yet his love for a woman and his desire to
understand her aloofness, awakens an interest in their
way of life and in his troubling dreams.
      The message of The Comforter is that forgiveness for
any act is possible, and that the dream is the arena for
such healing. Yet the author does not permit an
unbelievable transformation; on the contrary, Kirk
meets each revealing dream, each stage of the healing
process with defiance. Yet in the end he succeeds in
confronting his past through an act of self-surrender.
And in this act the Comforter, the Light, comes to him
for the first time.
      Dorothy Bryant weaves into The Comforter a number
of intriguing tools which the reader may use in personal
or group dream work. Thus although The Comforter is
primarily a mystical fantasy, it also provides an
eminently practical approach to dreams.
                                                          Gregory Scott Sparrow

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