Elizabeth's Wish

Elizabeth’s Wish deals with the last eighteen months of life of a terminally ill woman as she tries to repair the damaged relationships that she shares with her children before death overtakes her. In its most basic form the book deals with family relationships.


“In ELIZABETH’S WISH, Vince Daley takes us to that place where family relationships bring out the best and the worst in us - he takes us home. His narrative is moving and his dialogue captures the essence of the family dynamic that all of us can recognize.”

— Larry Steele, SENIOR GUIDANCE COUNSELOR, International American School, Beijing, China


“Vince Daley, like his role model, Pat Conroy, writes from a place that any reader can relate to, that of personal experience and pain. He pulls the curtain back on a dysfunctional family to reveal the life themes that if truth be told, most of us share in common.”

— Stephen McWilliams, M.F.A., Ph.D., Villanova University, PRODUCER, DIRECTOR, WRITER


“I loved D.O.R. because for me – as a Marine – it was funny, caustic, and accurate. I enjoyed ELIZABETH’S WISH because for me – part of a flawed family – it was tragic, blunt, and accurate. One of Daley’s characters professes about halfway through this engaging work, “I’m sorry to say it but my family is really garbage.” Daley

ends this effort challenging the reader to consider individual morals in the context of group (read family) ethics. The Callahan family is every family. No family is perfect nor without its trials, tribulations or its weaknesses. Thus, Mr. Daley is most correct in that acknowledging such a realistic perspective requires moral courage. And at the end of the story he reminds the reader of those brutal age-old questions regarding families – dysfunctional or not – which remain the most difficult of all and the ones “we all will have to live with” for the rest of our lives.”

— Colonel John C. Church, Jr., USMCR, PRESIDENT, Valley Forge Military Academy and College