“The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.” --Robert Louis Stevenson

Donna VanLiere is an artist with words. I have to admit I don't read fiction all that often, mostly because it's hard for me to suspend disbelief and stay inside the world the author created. That's why I was surprised (and my wife was astonished) that I entered Donna VanLiere's world in The Good Dream on page 1 and didn't leave until her final word.

I was on a wonderful cruise to Belize when I opened the book. Needless to say, I missed a full day of the cruise since I became so captured by the book that I didn't stop until I was finished all 320 pages.

While I probably should have been filling up plates of food at the buffet, I was walking the blistering hot dusty roads of Tennessee in the 1950's, right where VanLiere planned for me to walk...and right beside the characters she planned for me to walk with. (That's much better than a plate of cruise food. Particularly after the mouth-watering references to Ivorie's freshly made apple pies.)

(Dang. That makes me hungry all over again.)

To paraphrase Stevenson, she not only affected me, she affected me precisely as she wished.

VanLiere's dedication to authentic characters and their authentic conversations makes the story's suspenseful "twisty" plot a huge bonus because I could have spent hours just being a "fly on the wall" and "listening in" on the normal conversations of Ivorie and her friends (and foes.)

My only advice is to get the book on a rainy day from which you want to escape, not on a sun-filled cruise from which you paid to escape to!