THE 23RD DREAM

A first novel—as much about living as dying—that unsentimentally details the last year of fatally ill Adam Stauffer, husband, father, and good citizen. Raised on a small ranch in southern Texas, Adam had escaped ranch life as soon as he could and headed to Chicago. Here, he worked as an editor, married, fathered three children—Stephen, Bradley, and Melanie—and dreamed of someday writing a book. Life was sweet—despite some dark shadows: Adam and father Blake were not close; wife Marian had not seen her own father since childhood when he abandoned her and her mother; Marian herself had been treated for addiction to antidepressants; and the two adolescent boys were being typically difficult. Then, diagnosed with terminal lymphoma, Adam, who has kept a journal for years, begins to use it to record his fears and regrets; he is comforted, as is Marian, by a sympathetic hospital chaplain, but it is Adam's wish to go home to Texas that provides the catalyst for change—that ironically, in spite of Adam's ultimate death, will transform the family's lives. Once in Texas, the children, especially 17-year-old Stephen, who becomes close to Blake, are soon at home; Adam and Blake themselves make their peace; Marian and Adam enjoy moments of brief but surprising happiness; and Marian finds she has lost at last the fears that once troubled her. Close to death, Adam is comforted by dreams—especially what he calls in his journal ``this last, this best twenty-third dream,'' an evocation of the 23rd Psalm, which seems to explain the ``whole mess''—his life. The family too, it seems, will return to Chicago, grieving but at peace. An unpretentious anatomy of dying that tries to explain that great paradox—life in the midst of death—as it really is.