Morgan Freeman Narrates Islander's Book

Scripture states that God moves in a mysterious way. Count Marco Islander Bob Dugan as a believer. According to Dugan, his 2025 book All I Am is absolutely the result of divine intervention. And with Academy Award winner Morgan Freeman stepping in to narrate his book, Dugan, who adamantly insists he’s not a writer, says it’s just the latest in a long list of signs he’s received since losing the love of his life, wife Susan, in May, 2023.

Dugan said it was Jesus who directed him to write the book—and in fact walked him through the entire process. After three editions of All I Am have been printed, Dugan was informed by his publisher, Book Publisher Expert out of New York City, that a celebrity was interested in narrating his book.

"I got an email saying that they have a contract for an audiobook,” Dugan said, “and that a celebrity has expressed interest in narrating it. I thought, 'Okay. The first I heard of this. You don't have a contract with me yet.’ I didn't hear anything for a while, then I sat back and said, ‘You said a celebrity was going to read the book. Could you tell me who it is?’ They said, 'No. Not yet. We don't have an agreement.’ I thought, okay, fine. Forget about it. Then they got back to me and said, 'I hope you're sitting down.’ When I read it I thought, ‘Right, come on.' If there's one person on the face of the earth that you would want to narrate your book, against all odds, Morgan Freeman would be the one. And here he is coming to me. Are you kidding me? It just made no sense. I watched him in Prince of Thieves, which is probably the best Robin Hood movie there is.”

Dugan has plenty of experience in dealing with contracts as president and CEO of Thor Guard, the lightning prediction company with $8 million in annual revenues. But as a novice in the book publishing industry, he has found his critical thinking instincts on full alert. But Book Publisher Expert's explanation made sense.

“They said Morgan Freeman's agents reached out to a bunch of publishing companies,” Dugan said. "Mine was one of them. They asked for ten books in the spiritual base, because that's what he wanted to do. And he picked my book out of how many? Who knows?”

Dugan sees himself as a bit of a Doubting Thomas, the apostle of Jesus who refused to believe in Jesus’ resurrection until he could physically see and touch Jesus’ crucifixion wounds.

“A lot of the Thor Guard systems I developed,” Dugan said, “even though I thought my engineers did a great job, I never bought into it being great enough. I am always looking for things that need to be changed, fixed, whatever. It's just my nature. And of course we find those things and then we make adaptations or changes to the software or algorithm, whatever. So this is no different to me. If Morgan Freeman was here and sat down with me for an evening, then I would know he's doing the book. Doubting Thomas and I have a lot in common, but it’s healthy, I think, to do that."

Although he heard Freeman’s voice reading his book on a rough mix of the audiobook, Dugan still doubted it was really him. But his skepticism was allayed by a couple of recent developments.

"I was not convinced,” he said. "Why would he read my book? I didn't think my book was very good, to be honest. I really didn't. Even though I know who wrote it with me, Jesus, and he wouldn't write a bad book. I still did not think it was that good. But I started thinking about the first pre-order that came in for 8,700 CDs from Harper Collins. And I'm thinking, ‘There's no way in the world Harper Collins is going to stick their neck out on something that's not real. I'm beginning to now feel a little more comfortable with it.”

Dugan said Book Publisher Expert is excited over his project, especially now that the finished version of the audiobook with Freeman’s narration is on the market (Spotify and SoundCloud so far).

"They're a pretty big company,” Dugan said. "They don't have any authors that ever got somebody at Morgan Freeman's level to read a book. So to them, this is their baby. They're pumped and they are really doing everything they can to make it as easy on me as possible because they know I'm very skeptical.”

Dugan said a movie deal may be imminent, but because of nondisclosure agreements, he’s not at liberty to discuss them.

"I won't be convinced there's a movie deal until I meet with them,” Dugan said, “and we do an announcement, we sign a deal. That's when I'll know that's real.”

What Dugan already knows is real is how he came to write All I Am in the first place. He was at a golf conference representing Thor Guard.

"The foundation started at the Marriott Golf Conference in Arizona in 2023,” Dugan said. "It was in August. I did not want to go. We always sponsor stuff there and they bring all the golf pros and GM's from the resorts. It's a really great chance just to get together with everybody. I didn't want to go, but my guys here said, ‘You've got to get out of here.' So I went. I was playing golf with the pro from the Marriott in Grand Cayman. He didn't know that my wife had died. So we were riding in the cart. And we're talking about Thor Guard. Somehow the conversation got around to Susan. And I started crying. He said, 'I apologize for bringing it up.’ I said, 'You didn't know.' So I told him about some of the signs I had already seen. But still, the idea of a book wasn't there. Then he told me a story about his friend who had cancer. Then he started crying.

"The following night, I'm at the hotel and I meet a guy outside whose life mirrored mine.”

It turns out the gentleman Dugan was talking to wasn’t really there.

"I’ve done my research,” he said. "This guy doesn't exist. So that night, I’m trying to get to sleep. I had an awful night. Eventually I fell asleep. And then at 1:30 AM, a shotgun or something goes off and I wake up. It startled me. I woke up and I sat up trying to figure out where that came from. That's when Jesus started talking to me. I didn't audibly hear him. It was totally encompassing everything. I knew it was him, no question about it. It started right there. Jesus told me I'm gonna write a book, and it would be a story of my life that I didn't want to write.

"It probably took me a month and a half to even start, because I had no idea where to start, what to do. Nothing. But that night I made Jesus a promise. You shouldn’t do this, but I kind of insisted that He's going to have to help me. So I went upstairs late and prayed. And there was the foreword, just like that. And each chapter was done the same way. The things I remembered in the book I had forgotten years and years ago. There were things that I wanted to put in but He said no. So the things that are in there are the only things that He wanted included in the book. It took about eight months to write it. A lot of writing from 7:00 PM to 3:00 or 4:00 AM because I would not write it during work hours.

"I think my attitude toward talking to people about my faith has totally changed. I have nothing to hide. I already wrote it. It's in there. What am I going to do, renege on it? No chance. So I'm a little more aggressive about it. But not pushy. You can deny or say that these things didn't happen. But don't say they're all coincidences. Einstein's quote was coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous. He's the smartest guy that's ever walked the face of the earth. And if he got to the point where he's seeing beyond math and physics, then he's seeing something that few of us ever see.

"So all of a sudden, these things are really becoming real. I can say He had a plan all along. This is His plan, and I can be as doubtful as I want and question things, which is probably a good thing to do.

"When I did that first chapter, I knew I was throwing politics into it. Politics weren’t supposed to be in this. And it's not except for where I said I was adopted; thank God that abortion wasn't legal, or I would have never had this journey; I would have been killed. That was the only thing in the whole book that's political. But it made it because it's true. And He wanted me to put that in there. He said, ‘Let's get this out of the way right now. It will be such a strong statement. It won't be forgotten. I mean the things that came to mind when I was writing this were not things that were floating around in my head. Maybe they were, but I hadn't thought about it. But I was listening to Him.”

Dugan said that when he reads All I Am, he doesn’t recognize the writing as being his own.

“The sentence structures are amazing,” he said. "Everything was done so well and I know better. That is not the way I write. If you read my technical articles, they're not like that at all. They're technical, one and one equals two, blah blah blah. This is completely foreign to me. There's nothing out of place, except one thing near the end of the book. I talk about that when God creates your soul into a body, he knows what he wants you to be at the end of your life and everything in between. It's prescribed. It's up to us with free will to listen for the cues to keep us on course. And that if we do, at the end, we will be happy, satisfied, and we will have done everything we were supposed to do in our life. For some reason, a chapter later, maybe two, I was repeating it. And as I'm writing I thought, 'Oh, I already did this.' He said, 'Keep going. Do not take this out.' So I left it in. Clearly, that was a message He wanted to make sure God instilled in people that when you're born, God has a plan, from start to finish.”

Dugan can hardly wait to see what is next for All I Am.

“The journey is far from done,” he said. "I don't know where it's going to go. If Susan were alive, there'd be no book, which is a little bit challenging for me to accept. It's hard. People have called me who I don't even know, who have read it. They start reading it and they're entertained. Some of the things are funny. The golf brings in a live sport. My polio brings in challenges skiing. They get sucked into the love story. They all love Susan. They wish they had a Susan. And then, of course, they are torn apart and they're taken to a really low place in the book. It's really deep. So they're taken down to this really low point. Then all of a sudden, all these signs and miracles start happening and they're brought right back up again, hopefully with the belief that, ‘Oh my God, look what happened after the worst tragedy in this person's life. Look what Jesus did. He helped him. He saved him. And in the end the whole objective of the book is if you're open to it, just know Jesus isn't this mythical thing that you think about. He is alive and he's real, and he's with you and he loves you. And all you've got to do is return the favor and he'll make sure that you're okay.”

All I Am is available on Amazon.com.