Dream — Don West

Dream is a unique coming-of-middle-age tale about love and transformation. Tightly conceived, Dream is a contemporary love story and an astute commentary on a woman's place in today's world. Illuminating and compassionate, Dream also shows another romance, in alternate chapters, of a older couple facing end of life decisions. The story of Jack and Maggie Lawrence's long-time marriage is universal yet illuminates the problems, joys, and sorrows inherent in all baby-boomer relationships -- those closer to the end of their road than to their beginning. For our culture as for the Lawrences, time, like romance, escapes us; and as we attempt to age gracefully, we also struggle to keep our passions, dreams and love alive.Although they're artists, each in their own right (he a painter, she a photographer), health issues, dwindling resources, past infidelities and the grim reality of mid-life existence force them to finally face (and embrace) the prospect of change in a culture that treats growing older as an incurable disease. “Is that what getting old comes down to? Jack wonders. There's something about sameness that they find comforting -- the same motel time after time, the same beach at the same time every day, the same route on their walk visiting the shell shop, Ralph's Market, north end of the beach, then south. Revisiting the same restaurants, eating the same food, accompanied by more subtle and insidious routines that they no longer notice or think about, all contribute to their malaise. Could it be that they desire only to spend their lives killing time? -- languishing in those agreeable habits that make it possible to escape the rigors of thought and the perturbation of doubt, but which leaves them devoid of passion, living life in the comfort of the familiar…”When Jack and Maggie leave their desert home to spend a final week at the ocean, an annual pilgrimage, they also get a final chance to discover if “languishing in those agreeable habits” will be their ultimate fate, or if they still possess the ability to change and grow and make something more of their lives.In a tour de force of structure and style, West subtly makes his points by interweaving Jack and Maggie's story with one that runs deftly alongside, yet which is differentiated by the creation of characters several decades younger. When Emma, a gallery director whose artistic talents are withering in a stultifying marriage, meets the handsome young muralist, Alex, both are at a different bend in life's road than Jack and Maggie. Or are they? The decision that confronts Emma on her own journey will change the course of her life, yet the call of the “familiar” is powerful �" if not inescapable. Their interwoven tales mesh in a powerful yet touching, surprising and hopeful end. Complex yet effortlessly readable, DREAM examines the profound impact that love has on all our lives, regardless of our age, and powerfully expresses our undeniable need for it.