DREAM

Idalee Lovett’s summer is full of friendship and a dream of country music fame.

O’Connor revisits the Blue Ridge Mountains town of Colby, North Carolina (the setting of 2016’s Wish), where 11-year-old first-person narrator Idalee aspires to become her mother’s songwriter. Lovey Lovett and the Junkyard Dogs sing covers of popular songs, but Idalee, who comes from generations of country musicians, believes her original compositions can help her mother rise to stardom. She longs to win an upcoming songwriting contest for young people, but she doesn’t believe that any of the many songs she’s already written and strummed on her old, broken guitar have what it takes. She needs the blue guitar she saw in an Asheville music store. Idalee enlists friends Odell, Charlie, and Howard to help her find a treasure rumored to be hidden by her grandfather somewhere in her big, dilapidated family home, which has been turned into a rooming house. The pleasures of summertime independence and relaxed parenting and the absence of electronic screens and distractions give this work a timeless feel. Idalee’s songs focus on the funny and familiar. The lyrics of her new composition, “Dream,” are sweetly evocative: “Some folks dream of castles and dresses made of silk. / I dream of a cabin in the pines, cornbread, and buttermilk.” O’Connor’s affection for small towns, slightly eccentric people, and low-key humor shines through, her surehanded narrative and appealing characters reliably engaging, as always. Most characters read white.

Warm-hearted and wonderfully likable.