THE RECIPIENT

Casey Schillinge is a vivacious young woman on the verge of making her mark on the world. While backpacking, she is struck down by a tropical disease and suffers cardiac failure. But at the eleventh hour, Casey receives a life-saving heart transplant - and a rare second chance to begin again.

Three years later, Casey has become a withdrawn shell of her former self: she is estranged from her loved ones, afraid of open spaces and rides the line between legitimate and criminal work. The worst of her troubles come in the form of violent night terrors; so frightening that she resorts to extreme measures to keep herself from sleeping. When she can take no more, she embarks on a desperate search for the source of her dreams. In so doing, she makes a shocking discovery surrounding the tragic fate of the donor whose heart now beats inside her chest. As she delves deeper into the mystery of her donor, she realizes her dreams are not a figment of her imagination, but a real life nightmare.
Dean Mayes' debut novel, The Hambledown Dream, started as a blog and has since gone on to receive global attention and critical acclaim. His second novel, Gifts of the Peramangk, was nominated as a finalist in the prestigious EPIC Awards for contemporary fiction. Dean is a Pediatric Intensive Care nurse who is fascinated by the paranormal, so his stories weave an element of magical realism with deep humanism.