Little Did I Know

Little did I know in 2002 when working as a school counselor in California that the fictional book I was envisioning and had started writing would speak so appropriately to many of our country's trials as we now experience them. The Dream Keepers, as my story was soon named, took twelve years to write. Uncanny now for its timeliness in relation to many aspects of our country's unfolding future, my story was intended to actuate teenage readers towards a better understanding of diversity, friendship, and self-knowledge. Its purpose was a hopeful step towards motivation--and possibly towards a genuine grasping--of environments and mindsets holding the potential to provide a young person of any race or faith with a sense of dignity, safety, and calm amidst the chaos and turmoil of daily life.

This 21st century coming-of-age adventure tale is all-embracing, encouraging interest in varying aspects of everyday reality, from practical to spiritual. Its array of unfolding involvements demonstrates the healing power of love, nature, poetry and art, a swell as appreciation for scholarship and science.

As this book was first evolving, I became deeply impressed with poet Langston Hughes after unwittingly placing a poster of him on the wall of my counseling office at a school for students with behavior problems. Curious to know more about this distinguished-looking man, dubbed on the poster as "Poet Laureate of Harlem," I sought out his writings at my public library. Bringing home several books of his poetry, one of them entitled The Dream Keeper and Other Poems,I was profoundly moved, not only by this writer's insights and expressions of compassion and hope, but by his understanding of the racial challenges our world continues to face long after his passing. In connecting myself with the spirit of one of our country's most inspirational and beloved poets, the emotional journey of my fictional story had begun.