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When I was a kid, the Sears Wish Book catalogue was synonymous with Christmas. Here was page after page chock full of dolls in velvet dresses, plastic armored tanks, big kid board games, and every toy imaginable and unimaginable --- the stuff of dreams. It was probably the Wish Book that first taught me the art of dog-earing a page of a book to mark something of import, a habit I still have. For in the Wish Book was all the magical bounty that I had to ask Santa to leave for me under the tree, that filled my dreams in those post-Thanksgiving weeks counting down to Christmas. Isn't that what Christmas is all about: the dreams of children? Children of all ages, Richard Preston reminds us in his jewel of a book THE BOAT OF DREAMS. "There's no age cutoff" where dreams are involved.
THE BOAT OF DREAMS opens with this line: "The hauntings in our trailer began before Christmas, 1969, in the months after we learned that Dad had died in a rice paddy in Vietnam." The narrator, thirteen-year-old Will, lives in a Glidemaster trailer in New Harbor, Maine with his younger sister Lila and his widowed mother, Sarah Ann. When William Foster, Sr. died, he left behind his lobster boat, named after his wife, and his hopes that Will Jr. would one day man the boat with him.
Life isn't easy for the Fosters. Sarah Ann works long hours, struggling to bring home an income and refusing to sell her husband's grounded boat, despite helpful offers from several local fishermen. Will and Lila spend their afternoons alone, isolated in the dark trailer, until one day --- on one of my dog-eared pages --- they return from school to find someone had been in their home: "The bathroom was steamy, and there was a smell of sweat in it. The mirror had fogged up, and there was a dab of shaving cream on it; and there was a hand print on the glass."
The someone we learn later is none other than Dexter --- Nicholas Dexter Claus, that is --- and he is visiting because "there is a need in this place ... there is a need for your dreams."
In less capable hands, THE BOAT OF DREAMS could have devolved into a frightening story for children. The elements are there: children alone, the death of a parent, hauntings. And, let's face it, even the capable hands of Richard Preston, whose known for his horrific tales of ravaging viruses and diseases, might give the prospective reader cause to wonder what the pages hold. But Preston is nothing if not a brilliant storyteller, and THE BOAT OF DREAMS has all the best elements of a classic holiday story, including humor aimed at children (and the child in all of us).
On another dog-eared page, Dexter (Santa) has taken a spill and proclaims, "Owwwww ... I think I broke my coccyx," to which young Lila, upon learning what a coccyx is, giggles and replies, "Dexter took a butt attack." It's a silly, silly joke, but if you ever have the privilege of hearing Preston read it out loud, and then witness the ensuing laughter from six-year-olds and sixty-year-olds in the audience, you'll understand the charm of this humor and this book.
But back to the dreams, the crux of this wonderful tale. Dexter takes the children on a magical boat-turned-sleigh ride and he teaches them the importance of holding on to your dreams, sharing your dreams, and encouraging all to dream, too. Instead of dispensing Wish Book toys, Santa, along with Will and Lila, dispense dreams: "I'm dreaming they put down their guns all over the Earth! I dreamed that all the killing stopped, and afterward I heard the sound of voices telling wonderful stories! I'm dreaming someone paid off your credit card for you! I'm dreaming you learned passable French! I'm dreaming you wanted to be a poet, so you wrote a poem that was actually published in the newspaper. Only one person read your poem, a person who was thinking of suicide, but your poem saved that person's life! I'm dreaming you baked a perfect chocolate cake! I dreamed the Red Sox won the World Series!" And more and more and more ...
THE BOAT OF DREAMS is simply a delight. It is destined to take its place among the holiday classics that are reread annually by your family. I'm dreaming that the entire book will be dog-eared after years and years of use.
--- Reviewed by Roberta O'Hara
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