Let me introduce you to my new book!
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Reviews:
Jorge Zeballos, Journalist
*A Quiet, Honest Journey of Faith, Cities, and Calling*
_Searching for John_ (2025) is not a loud book. It does not preach, nor does it rush toward conclusions. Instead, it walks—patiently, reflectively—through cities and countries (USA, Chile, Ireland), memories (like a “Cazuela”), and moments that slowly shape a life (MET). That is precisely its strength.
Written with clarity and humility, the book belongs broadly to the genre of *spiritual memoir and travel narrative*, but it resists easy classification to me. It is neither a theological treatise nor a conventional autobiography. Rather, it is a testimony shaped by movement: across cities, across seasons of life, and across questions of identity and calling.
In my view, Chapters VI, VII, and VIII form a particularly meaningful core of the book. In these chapters, three central threads come fully into focus: *the city as a formative agent, travel as ethical transformation, and storytelling as a way of ordering experience*. Here, movement ceases to be merely geographical and becomes vocational. There is no systematic theology yet—but there is a persistent intuition: that to move is also to listen.
One of the most striking passages reflects this insight:
“_The most significant place where I was changed forever was not my birthplace, but New Jersey. When I was fifteen years old, I went to Weehawken High School and helped my cousin work in Manhattan during the summer. I lived, interacted with, and saw every nation in one place; this was life transforming for a fifteen-year-old teenager._”
This moment captures what the book does best: showing how cities imprint ethical, aesthetic, and spiritual marks on those who pass through them. New Jersey, Manhattan, ports and crossings—these places are not backdrops, but teachers. The journey is not escapism; it is pedagogy.
Later, the narrative deepens as travel becomes inseparable from calling:
“_I invite you to travel with me, through buses, aeroplanes, trains, and the New York Subway._”
Here, the past is not treated as decoration or nostalgia. It becomes a way of inhabiting the present. That resonance is personal for this reader as well: the idea that early journeys—sometimes half-understood at the time—continue to shape who we become decades later feels profoundly true.
Another quiet highlight appears when the author reflects on music, memory, or faith. In Dario’s words: “Fate, destiny, or perhaps the sovereignty of God may have placed you in the right place.” This line reveals the book’s deeper continuity: these topics are not ruptures in the author’s life, but successive expressions of the same search for meaning.
Dario’s prose is accessible and unpretentious, and moving. “_Why do you follow me?_” he tries to respond. The book reads easily, moving through scenes, encounters, and reflections without theological jargon or literary excess. Faith is presented as lived experience rather than institutional certainty. For readers interested in spirituality without dogmatism, this approach will feel refreshing.
*Who is this book for?*
• Readers interested in non-dogmatic Christian spirituality
• Those who enjoy travel narratives understood as inner transformation
• Faith communities seeking reflective, non-triumphalist testimony
• And, perhaps unexpectedly, secular readers curious about religion as a human and cultural experience, like me.
_Searching for John_ does not shout; it listens. It does not insist; it invites. Its highlights are not dramatic revelations, but moments of quiet clarity—those rare sentences that name what many have lived but never quite articulated.
This is a book about personal walking, remembering, and learning to hear a call that often arrives while we are already on the road. In this sense, it is a universal story.
D.L. 