David G Daniel

A Life Twice Given is an adventure, a family drama about transcendent love, life changing decisions and the restoration of the joy of life after disaster.

The first universal question of the book is “How far would you go to give a loved or dear one back their life”. We know what our western religious traditions tell us about grieving and honoring their memory. All losses are egregious, but in a particularly egregious loss, if you had the chance to bring him or her back by cloning would you?

How much risk would you take, for side effects, for breaking the law? Would cloning be moral or immoral from the perspective of our religious faith? Would it be the same person if the birth order changed? Would the cloned body have the same soul as the original person?

These are all questions that the book’s protagonists, Rachel and Joseph, face when an idyllic summer afternoon in the mountains turns into disaster when their oldest child, seven year old Joey is killed and Rachel gravely injured.

Every member of the family copes differently. The 4 year old twins Noah and Teddy through the fortress of the special relationship only twins have, Bevy through wit and parenting the twins, Rachel by her own courageous recovery and modeling of the joy of life and Joseph by trying to make a deal with God to sacrifice his life to bring back Joey.

In the book you see all of this though the lens of science, psychiatry, religion and fiction; and through the perspective of my wife Lisa and I who did unexpectedly lose our oldest son in 2004.

You have to read the book to see what happens, but I can promise you intrigue, adventure, twists and a poignant and beautiful love story. In the end I hope to shake up your notions of the borders between life and death and reality and fantasy.