POCATELLO — For many writers, publishing a book is a lifelong dream. For Daniel Miller, the idea came to him in one.

The dream involved whales, whale hunters and rebirth. The themes Miller took away from it — perspective, trauma and healing — touched him deeply, and he knew he needed to get the story on paper. Despite working toward an MBA in project management, hosting a nonprofit podcast and raising a family at the time, he committed to telling the tale.

Eighteen months later, Miller was a published author. His literary fiction novel, “I Am the Whale,” was released in March by Joint Venture Publishing and became an Amazon national bestseller. It is available from online retailers and local bookstores.

Miller will host a launch party for signed copies this Friday during Historic Downtown Pocatello’s First Friday Art Walk from 5 to 8 p.m. at Hares and Hatters Bookshop, located at 200 S. Main St. Suite G.

“I Am the Whale” reimagines Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick” from an entirely different perspective — not the obsessed captain bent on destroying the whale, but the whale herself. The novel follows a mother whale who loses her calf to hunters, grieves and beaches herself hoping to die, only to be told by a mysterious voice that she will be reborn into the whale hunter’s family. What follows is a story of grief, generational trauma, identity and healing.

“Nobody tells Moby Dick’s story,” Miller said. “And that’s what I started to do, was tell the whale’s side of the story. I built this fictional world and I used my own experiences in life and told my life story in the language of whale and myth.”

Writing the novel was a cathartic experience for Miller, a military veteran and suicide survivor who founded the nonprofit podcast Operation Freedom Recovery to support struggling veterans.

“As I was writing this story, I realized writing is powerful, it’s cathartic, it really allows us to process our traumas,” he said. “I was able to navigate my military trauma, my family trauma, my religious trauma. I was able to navigate those in the storytelling format and found the benefits were profoundly healing.”

Miller hopes readers find their own answers and healing in the story. Several moments during the writing process seemed to signal that the book needed to be finished. One came when news broke of a gray whale beaching itself on the California coast — just after he had finished writing the chapter in which the mother whale beaches herself.

“It electrified the whole team,” he said. “They’re like, ‘Dan. The universe is listening. There are real world events that are happening right now that are in sync with the story that we’re writing.’ And whether it was a whale beaching itself or somebody’s family member on the team who had just committed suicide, whatever it was ... for us, this isn’t just a book, this isn’t just a story, this is happening in real time to people on this Earth.”

He continued, “The energy that was happening in the background was really telling us that this is something we need to bring out to the world because it’s going to resonate with people. It might even help answer some people’s questions and maybe give somebody some ease and rest on whatever it is they’re struggling with.”

For those who delve into the world of I Am the Whale, the story doesn’t end there.

There are two additional books planned that Miller will be exploring, with updates to come about both future books and book signings on his website, danieljmiller.com.