The Life We Dream: my review

The Life We Dream: J.H. Glaze

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could program our lives in our car’s GPS knowing that the course we are about to travel will be the one that will make our lives complete? Wouldn’t it be nice if an architect could create a perfect blueprint that would highlight all of the roads, valleys and trouble spots that we might face in our daily lives and provide detours within this blueprint for how to avoid the pitfalls? But, life does not always work that way and sometimes we have to deal with the many adversities, disappointments and sorrows that if we could avoid we would. A simple phone call, a friend from that past that reaches out to you and your live takes on new meaning. Jack Bailey hesitates before answer a phone while driving. Missing his intended exit and taking this call would drastically change the outcome of his day and his world. Art Cline a friend from high school was on the phone informing him about the imminent death of his first love and Art’s wife, Sarah.

Just hearing her name brought back memories and Jack, although headed somewhere else, could not ignore what Art was saying. No longer living at home but in a hospice, Jack sets his GPS in the direction of the hospice hoping to get there in time. Author J.H. Glaze sets the dramatic stage for the events that are about to come, the memories shared by Jack and Sarah of their young lives, the reasons they never married and the hope that someday they would be together. Memories are precious and the ones shared by Jack are vividly told, crystal clear and the images described allow readers to go back in time to 1976 when two young five year olds met in kindergarten and formed a friendship and special love that would last until the end of time.

Do we ever really know when love will come to us? Do you ever really know whether a friendship will last forever? Driving to see Sarah and hoping to get there in time we hear Jack’s voice, endure his frustrations when the highway is blocked with an accident, he realizes he is speeding when traffic lets up and follows the course set out to see Sarah. All of his life he could not let go of his feelings for her nor would he ever forget her. The author shares their thoughts, memories and the one summer that changed it all as Sarah went to spend time with her grandparents and when she returned nothing was the same.

A young man’s dreams are shattered, a friendship torn apart and his heart broken. When Sarah returns to school not only is her appearance quite different but also her attitude towards Jack is not quite the same. A good friend that he trusts betrays him, the love of his young life moves on and the next thing we know we are back in the present. What happens when you want the past but cannot relive it in the present? What happens when you hope and dream but cannot find a middle ground between fact and fantasy? Thinking about Sarah, reflecting on their times together, high school events and then one quick move of the steering wheel causes him to stop, reflect and turn his thoughts back to Sarah. Focused so much on what he hoped for he does not see what is right in front of him. An accident or just a dream? The world around him crashes, his thoughts reflect on graduation, past activities and then a specter or is he real? The morning mist, the air crisp and the strange events: What is real? What is fiction?

Jack arrives at the hospice and sees Sarah for the first time in many years. When you visit her room, listen to their innermost thoughts and create the many images that the author describes you, the reader will decide what really happens. Imagine seeing someone after so many years. Imagine the smells of the chemicals within the room, the tubes attached and the pale image. A reunion of powerful that only author J.H. Glaze allowing anyone that has ever experienced a first love, a true love that they lost to regain the moments in time even for a few seconds. As Jack and Sarah seem to reconnect the moments they share, the truths that are revealed and the stories that he tells her are so poignant and powerful that they make their pasts come alive in the present.

Can two people whose lives and paths were not created by that architect so they would permanently intersect and their paths would never veer off in different directions finally find their way back home? The room was silent, the machines at their full capacity and Jack and Sarah will take readers into the hearts, relate stories that will endear you to both of them and hopefully bring to light what might have been if the world was perfect and an architect made the right lines, circles and drawings to create a life for two young five year olds that fell in love in so many years ago and just wanted one chance to Live the Life They Dreamed. Trips that are described to the Caribbean, her grandparents coming to America and fulfilling their hopes and dreams to start a family and live a good life and an ending that will make you think: What is real? What is Fantasy? What makes our dreams come true? 71 pages that will grab you the moment your open the book and bring tears to your eyes in the end. This is one book that might renew your faith in true love.

Fran Lewis: reviewer