The Son Will Ryse

The Son Will Ryse follows long-time covert drug addict and aspiring writer, Colton Hayes. Lost and depressed in his twenties, Colton’s suicidal ideations ultimately lead to a fateful drug overdose. Upon waking from the overdose, our protagonist begins to see what he believes to be hallucinations of an androgynous celestial figure he chooses to call: The Angel. 

Unsurprisingly, this experience immediately primes Colton to check himself into a rehabilitation clinic. There, he meets a litany of diverse characters who begin to shed some light on the reality of the addictions that have plagued his early adulthood. All the while, Colton secretly hides the fact that he is having routine dreams of being inside a womb and routine visits from The Angel, who continues to inform the young man that his survival of the overdose is some massive cosmic mistake that must be resolved quickly.   

By the time he checks out of rehab, Colton learns from The Angel that half of his soul has been imbued into an unborn child. To make matters more convoluted, this cosmic intertwining ultimately causes the young man to be profoundly magnetized toward the mother of the child that bears half of his soul. 

Within the week, Colton manages to become friends with the mother and learns an even uncannier truth from The Angel: if he doesn’t choose to kill himself again, his new friend’s child will be born stillborn because no human being can survive birth with an incomplete soul. 

So, what will Colton choose? A second chance at life in the form of a sober beginning? Or will he choose to kill himself within the next month before his friend’s baby is due?  

The Son Will Ryse is an 89-thousand-word darkly comedic fantasy novel based on a series of real personal experiences before, during, and after my self-initiated trip to rehab. Given its basis in reality, the novel offers an insightful and realistic portrayal of the psychology and the experience of being a drug addict, specifically one seeking to get sober.

“Rehab was the one place where you got to know people in reverse—first you learn about all of their deepest, darkest secrets and catalogs of regretted mistakes, then once you were comfortable with one another, the menial small-talk ensues”

“Your survival was a divine anomaly, and I wanted to discover the meaning behind that anomaly. All great accidents have equally great causes.”

“Life is like an IKEA table. We could spend our whole time here on Earth trying to build it with only our common sense and advice from our friends who think they know better, but once we listen to the directions given to us by the creator, it all becomes a simpler task. We need the patience to rebuild it when it has been put together in the wrong way.”

“There was no more pain, no more tears, no more body. I just simply was. Jiro, I felt like the sun.”

“Exponentially forming seracs of bitterly cold and knotted emotions, constructed from my life’s existential loose ends, were gradually filling the gaping internal voids I had long left unaddressed, converting the heat of cold into a heat of warmth. An internal, shifting entropy rewriting the coding of my weather that was thought to be perpetually inextricable.”