Playing Dad

About the Book

Dan Apeatu is a reformed alcoholic and a workaholic. He is an acknowledged trainer in leadership with a successful consultancy. His work is his life. Till his children, from whom he has been separated for twelve years, find him. He is willing to play his role as a father, which he understands to mean his paying their school fees and providing money for their other needs.

However, in his first real conversation with his daughter he discovers that the children want more from him than just providing for their needs.  Life with their mother had been hell and the children were looking for a father and not just a provider. In the anguish of his daughter he discovered the image of a father – a friend, an older brother, a loving uncle, a confidant, a pillar of support, a 24 hour refuge, and a warm bosom in which they would be cradled if they must cry.

But Dan’s life is filled with his work and he is not sure he can find space in the crowded schedule of his life for a wife and children. Without a wife he is not sure he can manage two teenage children when he had never learnt how to be a father.

Torn between a strong desire to give the children their due and an equally strong fear – almost certainty – that he would fail in his duties as a father, Dan reluctantly agrees to take time off for the children. It is the first step in a sometimes sweet, sometimes tearful process towards re-establishing a father and children relationship. As all three learn to re-establish the relationship the father finds that he gains more from the relationship than the children.

About the Author

Chals Wontewe was born in Kumasi, Ghana, to Northern Ghanaian parents. He had his education in various parts of the country; Navrongo, Kumasi, Sekondi and in Accra. He has worked with different international organizations including CUSO, a Canadian NGO, the Catholic Relief Service, an American NGO, and the Voluntary Service Overseas, a British NGO.

He has worked with ActionAid, an international NGO as the Deputy Country Director in Nigeria and in Ghana and was for three years the Country Director of VSO in Sierra Leone. He is at present the Country Director of Oxfam Great Britain in Liberia.

Chals has travelled in thirteen African countries, including Nigeria, Kenya, Malawi and Zimbabwe the other countries in which Playing Dad was set.

He was introduced to reading and writing by American Peace Corps volunteers in the junior forms in secondary school. Since then he has been an avid reader of writers like Hammond Innes, Alistair MacLean, Nevil Shutte, Edgar Wallace, Danielle Steele, PG Wodehouse, Frederick Forsyth, Arthur Hailey, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Irving Wallace, Harold Robbins, James Hadley Chase, Sidney Sheldon, Robert Ludlum,  John Grisham and Val McDermid among others.  He has  also read works of African writers such as Ngugi wa Thiongo, Chinua Achebe, Cyprian Ekwensi, Chukwumeka Ike, Amos Tutuola and Ayi Kwei Armah. His favourite playright is the French humorist Molière. His favourite characters include PG Wodehouse’s Ukridge, Albert Camus’ Meursault, Don Camillo and his communist friend and foe Pepone created by the Italian writer Giovanni Guareschi and Edgar Wallace’s J G Reeder.

Chals started writing short stories for national newspapers and magazines in secondary school. He has also written plays for broadcast on radio. Playing Dad is his first novel. 

Chals has a Masters in Organisational Leadership from Azusa Pacific University, USA