The Dream Peddler
(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)
This was a Book Club selection, and it put me in a bit of a quandry. There was no ebook available at either library. I eventually was able to get a print edition. I kept putting off reading it for odd reasons. Starting new books is always a little on the difficult side for me, but lately print is worse. I can't adjust the font size any more. (Actually, i've made my ereader font smaller because I thought it was too large!) Adding to this, I read on the subway in the morning, but I usually have a coffee in one hand, so holding a book can be difficult. Coming home the trains are crowded, so standing and trying to read a paperback is even more ridiculous. And reading a paperback by lamplight in bed only gets me so far (maybe a page or two) unless I'm really drawn in.
And then comes the dumbest excuse of all: my kindle app has a daily reading counter. Yes, I wanted to keep my streak going, to a year, to 400 days, to whatever number I can get it to. I don't know what I'll do if I finally miss a day. Take a break, maybe. But that meant reading other things, even if only for a half hour, every day.
In the end, I got the book on tape, unabridged and nine hours long. It wasn't the sort of thing I could just sit and listen to. That actually started putting me to sleep. So I'd listen while walking, when I didn't have my radio. And I'd listen when I was standing in the train. For a while, I would read later to catch up, but that didn't last long, and she was reading the entire text.
In the end, I didn't finish before the book club meeting, but I wound up out the house that night.
It's a small town before everyone had cars. A lot of walking and wagons. A young boy, Benjamin Dawson, goes missing. And a stranger, Robert Owens comes to town. He finds a room at Vi's boardinghouse where he sets up his supplies. He's a dream peddler. He sells dreams, or rather potions that will make you have dreams.
The first to buy one -- Owens gives it away for free -- is a tenn, Toby Jenkins, who wants to have a dream about girls. He passes the word along to other boys. No one believes that selling dreams is possible and that he must be a charlatan, but people come to see him. Mr. Dawson wants a dream that might tell him where to look for Toby -- Owens doesn't think it'll work but maybe his subconscious will tell him something.
After the boy's body is found beneath the ice in the river (no foul play expected), Owens avoids his mother, Evie. She finally corners him, not to ask for a dream of her son, but not to dream at all.
A teen girl, Christina Blackwell, wants to dream of her future husband, which again isn't exactly possible. He ends up dreaming of somone other than who she'd hoped. That get her and her friend Cora Jenkins to try to shape the future so that the right boy is looking at her. It turns out that he's a bit of jerk (a big jerk by the end) and the other boy isn't all that bad, so that dream may come to pass after all.
The peddler only stays in one place for a while and then moves on. It's a great business, but there's a problem. People have to tell their secrets to him when explaining their dream. After a while, Owens says, they can start to resent you knowing so much.
It plays out a little differently here with people using dreams for the wrong purposes, with results not what they're expecting. On top of that, Cora Jenkins develops a crush on Owens, who isn't interested, and even if he was, he knew that he could settle down and go on the road. And constant traveling would be no life for Cora (or anyone else). You almost hope that something would develop between Owens and Vi (but, again, I'm listening, so I may have missed details about Vi's age). Evie obviously develops feelings even though she's happily married.
In the end, he's chased away because of the preacher and because of the scuttlebutt involving Cora (who, SPOILER!, miscarries).
I did plan on reading the last chapter or two of the book, but that didn't happen despite having the book in my bag for a couple of weeks. I passed it on to the next library reader. I hope the book wasn't worse for wear in my bag.
It was a good story. I do wish I'd read it instead of listened (or both) just because it's sometimes confusing which character is speaking. And if I ever wanted a good definition of "speculative fiction", this is it. Everything is normal, except for this one speculative element, "What if a person could sell dreams?"
I should check out what else Watson has written... that's available as an ebook.
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