WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU HAD ONLY A YEAR TO LIVE? When a stranger poses this question in a supermarket checkout line, Cricket Thompson is jolted out of her everyday life to face a startling She has a loving husband and two wonderful teenage daughters and feels profoundly and utterly alone. The tides of change are slowly pulling her toward something new and barely another man. But before she can even contemplate this internal shift, an act of deadly violence erupts at the local shopping mall, causing Cricket's whole world to come crashing down. Through the prism of this surreal crisis, Cricket's life is irrevocably altered...and without her knowledge or consent, she is plunged into the kind of cataclysmic event that by its very nature breeds transformation. An exploration of the solace of dreams and the fragility of being wide awake, These Dreams is an astoundingly powerful and heart-wrenching novel that no reader will soon forget. Look for Barbara Chepaitis's wonderful new novel, Something Unpredictable -- coming soon in hardcover from Atria Books.
I once asked a college class I was teaching to give me their biographies using one piece of paper, any way they wanted. I got back origami, paper airplanes, essays, crayola drawings and more - which made for some fun, instead of reading insipid, uninspired lists of facts. My biography, using one piece of paper, would be a drawing of a tree, with roots reaching down through the darkest part of the earth toward its molten core, and branches straining toward the stars. Birds, a few monkeys, a jaguar, and a million fireflies would populate the branches hung with all kinds of fruit and flowers. And it would be a big tree. Very big indeed. Big as a soul.
I loved this book! It was very thought provoking, and I don't want to forget it. About a mother and 2 daughters, Janis and Grace. And a very sad happening...