If you were to cross paths with "Eliam" author Edward Paul Fry, a presence within the Indiana creative scene for years now, I imagine you'd stop and quietly listen.

Sometimes, the universe announces someone's presence in a gentle whisper. Fry's presence is, indeed, a gentle whisper.

So, I suppose there's my first confession as I put into words my response to Fry's unexpected holiday delight "Eliam."

I do know Fry. I would have considered him a more casual yet steady presence until the last couple of years when Fry became an essential ingredient in the outward birth of telling my own story through a film called "The Tenderness Tour." Fry initiated the process, really, visiting my home alongside a mutual friend to share his response to my own book, "The Hallelujah Life," and his passionate belief that it was a story to be told.

If I were to describe "Eliam," I might first describe it as a foundational spiritual autobiography for Fry written within a year that he has acknowledged was a year of transitions. However, "Eliam" is fiction despite my own heart and mind's easily connecting as a story fundamental to Fry's life journey.

"Eliam" is perhaps best suited for those from the teens on up. Those with some connection to spirituality, whether Christianity, Buddhism, Indigenous or otherwise, will also find much to connect with her.

The story centers around, you guessed it, a young lad named Eliam. Eliam, we will learn, has always been a tad different. He whispers when the world shouts. He wonders when the world so often seeks to squelch curiosity. He's a compelling lad whose journey is reflective, gentle, meditative and, I'd dare say, even healing.

Fry, who starred in "This Train," stepped out of his comfort zone to produce "The Tenderness Tour." He steps out of that comfort zone again to share with us "Eliam," though he's also shared he intuitively knew this story was bigger than a song or poem.

At its essence, "Eliam" is a story about that moment in life when something deeper begins to start. Fry himself calls the story "a journey of myth and memory," a description that fits perfectly. It's about that moment, perhaps and at least for me, when we begin to realize that life has changed us - whether it's simply because of life journey, trauma, illness, loss, grief or whatever - and, at least for me, it's curiosity and wonder that will ultimately save us and bring us back to who we've always been.

This year, my father passed away. It has left me without immediate family - my brother, mother, father, spouse, and newborn child all having gone before me. I still have family and I still have family of choice along with treasured friends, however, these losses have somehow called me back toward a sense of wonder and surrender. This is a gentle story, a relatively brief literary journey at just under 80 pages. However, it's a meaningful one sublimely timed for the holidays.

Ideal in print and available also for the Kindle, "Eliam" builds from a literary whisper and grows into the fullness of its story not of who we're becoming but of who we already are.

Written by Richard Propes
The Independent Critic