Summary of The Princess is Coming

This is a novel following the trials and tribulations of a young girl, who despite her rejection by authorities, miraculously returns from what many thought was her death, to save a town from the grips of sure disaster.

It is a story about innocence and rejection. A six year old child has nothing but innocence but her abilities are rejected. If only the entire world were as innocent as she.

It is a story about miracles and the disbelief that follows. Everyone wishes for miracles, but many question them when they arrive. The down-trod-den are sometimes the real heroes.

Never look down on another person as they may be your savior later on.

Even in seriousness there still can be humor. Surely, both a tear and a smile can coexist together in a story.

A town is born. The shame of town officials and the greed of some will never be forgotten. There are always those in life that will attempt to take advantage. Unfortunately, we all must live with them.

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Local News Article July 2008

By Mauareen Walsh
GateHouse News Service
Posted Jul 02, 2008 @ 05:31 PM
Weymouth —

Dan Sullivan remembers turning the TV off in disgust and thinking: I could write something better than that.
Twenty years later, his first novel, “The Princess is Coming,” tells a tale of innocence and miracles in a world he believes has grown almost too jaded to believe in either one.

“I think the only thing I saw on TV back then was Michael Landon’s angel story (“Highway to Heaven”). Everything else was junk,” Sullivan said. “There are so many stories out there full of sex and swears and this and that. I thought this might be a clean story, a good story, what they call a feel-good story. Hopefully, people will get that out of it.”

The heroine of “The Princess is Coming” is six-year-old Rebecca Swanson, the sunny-natured child of an embittered father. When Becca is given the gift of healing, she is treated by the people of her small town with reverence and gratitude on the one hand, ridicule or open hostility on the other.

Soon the town is inundated with believers and skeptics, the desperately ill and the shamelessly opportunistic. When Becca’s life is threatened, she becomes lost and must rely on a rag-tag bunch of new friends, who dub her “The Princess,” to help her save her town from catastrophe.
Sullivan said the novel reflects the modern response to the idea of miracles, and the reluctance to recognize miracles that come through a human agent.

“If miracles do happen, no one knows when they arrive anyway. People don’t believe it because they don’t want to believe it,” he said. “There are healers out there. God works through them and allows things to happen. It’s not like an impossibility.”

“It’s a far reach,” he said, “but not as far-reaching as that kid running around on a broomstick. Potter? In a sense, as hard as this is to believe, it could happen.”

“The Princess is Coming” is the first novel for Sullivan, a lifelong resident of Weymouth. Before that, he wrote short stories to while away the long hours monitoring the radio when he was in the Coast Guard.

“Unknown to me, the people on the other watches found them and were showing them to people at other stations,” he said. “One day a guy asked me, ‘When’s your next new story?’ I said, ‘That’s it for a while.’”

Sullivan published an earlier book of nonfiction, “Our Bad, Our Good, Our God,” about thirty years ago after experiencing “a spiritual awakening,” he said ‘Good stuff’.

Sullivan started and stopped writing this novel several times over the years. “I’d put it on the shelf and do something else, then I’d dust it off again,” he said.Several years ago, he showed a draft of the novel to the Reverend Ronald Coyne, then pastor at St. Albert the Great Parish, who encouraged him to pursue the project, Sullivan said. He shelved it again when the church was closed, then after it reopened, he dusted off the manuscript one last time.

“The Princess is Coming” was published this spring by Author House.
“My original idea was that there was not enough good stuff being done,” said Sullivan. “When I was mulling around in my head what kind of story to write, I realized the story had to be one addressed to younger people, juvenile up to college age, and women. They’re the ones who read books, who buy them and collect them.”

“I decided it was best to do that with a young heroine.”

Sullivan said he is considering a sequel to “The Princess is Coming” or another novel.

“Originally there was a twenty-page section I took out, a bedtime story the Professor is telling Becca,” he said. “It didn’t belong in this story. It was like an intermission. But that story might have some merit.”
S
ullivan was born in Weymouth in 1943 and joined the U.S. Coast Guard in 1960, immediately after high school. He served four years in ports from Newfoundland to Rio de Janeiro. He returned to Weymouth and joined New England Telephone, which became Verizon, and is recently retired.
While working, he took night courses at Newbury College towards a degree in business, as well as correspondence courses in writing.
Sullivan and his late wife Pauline raised two daughters who still live in Weymouth, Colleen Sullivan and Denise Gray. He has two grandchildren, David Gray, 16, and Emily Gray, 12, of Weymouth.
“The Princess is Coming” can be ordered on line through Amazon.com, Google Books or the publisher’s website at www.authorhouse.com/bookstore.

Sullivan said any royalties the book earns will be donated to the St. Albert Parish fund and other charities.

“If any group liked the book and twenty people bought it together, they could have their charity get some of it,” he said. “I just wanted to write a feel-good story with no cuss words and nobody really hurt.”