Dreaming Maples, the ebook

When the novel came out in 2002, there were no ebooks...

Just in time for sugaring season, my first novel Dreaming Maples is out as an ebook. I have my good friend Shelley Rolf to thank for this. Last month, Shelley invited me to speak to the Rosh Chodesh group of women at Hevreh of Southern Berkshire, in Great Barrington, and I realized some of the women might prefer to read an ebook.

So here it is, during sugaring season, which always signals big happenings in the maple trees. It’s $4.99 — on Amazon at Dreaming Maples, kindle edition.

For those of you who don’t know the book, it’s a tale of four generations of women who are struggling to balance mothering with art and childrearing, and their desire for freedom.

Here is the Prologue

In the dream, it is early evening.  Fall.  All the shadows have melted into the ground and the sky is a sweet milky blue.  Candace is lying in the grass, too tired to move, staring into the giant maple in Audrey’s front yard.  A single star appears.  The star is a dazzling pearl, a distant pinprick of fire in the clear night.  And then the marvel happens.  The star comes cascading out of the zenith, hurling itself toward earth with the speed that only light can have.  It touches a leaf on the tree and the leaf catches fire and burns brilliant yellow.  Miraculously, though, like Moses’ burning bush, the mother maple is not consumed in flame.  Soon another star shows itself in the sky and it too is a grain.  And again, it flies down from the heavens and a second leaf explodes into red flame.  The same thing happens, over and over again, stars falling like fireworks from the heavens, stars bursting into leaf, the light coming to life in orange, crimson and a host of glowing fall colors.  Every star is a match to a leaf.  As the tree billows up, Candace stands, because the scene is a miracle and it takes her breath away, the mother maple, incandescent in the yard, filling the night sky.

Later, when she is older, and the dream comes true, she wonders.  Do dreams set fire to our worst fears?  Or do they lead us like searing biblical visions into lands that we can only bear to see first with our eyes closed?

Look for it — for $4.99 — on Amazon at Dreaming Maples, kindle edition.