"Heartwarming Country Charm"
Reviewed by Susan Dyer
Posted September 14, 2012
Women's Fiction
In THE GOOD DREAM by Donna VanLiere we meet Ivorie Walker
who is considered an old maid in her town. She is really
only in her early 30's but back then if you were unmarried
at that age, they called you an old maid. She doesnt
really care what others think, but after her mother dies
leaving her all alone, she is lost and lonely. This story
takes place in 1950's Tennessee country side where things
aren't always what they seem. Everyone has secrets as
Ivorie is about to learn. Ivorie finds herself staring at what has been stealing and
eating out of her vegetable garden one day. A small boy
who doesn't want to talk and is very dirty and unkempt.
Where did he come from? Where are his parents and how did
he get here? After thinking about it for a bit, she decides
she is going to help this little boy even after everyone in
town is telling her it is wrong and not to get involved.
How can she turn her back on this poor little boy? She
starts to help him right then and there by feeding him. While all of this is going on, Ivorie finds herself falling
in love with George. She hasn't had much experience with
the men she has met over the years and George is awakening
feelings inside of her that she has never felt before. But
all of that changes when she tries to help the little boy.
George is dead set against it and is afraid of what will
happen to her. The boy must come from the hills where the
mountain people live and they can be dangerous. George
pulls away from her. With or without George in her life.
she is determined to find out where the boy came from and
where his Momma is. THE GOOD DREAM was my very first Donna VanLiere book, but I
can tell
you, it won't be my last. She has a way of pulling you
into the story right from the get go. I was so wrapped up
in Ivorie's life and had to keep turning the pages to find
out what was going to happen. I read this book in one day
and now I'm wondering if Donna will be writing a sequel on
these characters. Ivorie was quite the character and she
had me laughing one minute and crying the next. She was so
brave to go out of her way to help the little boy and
wouldnt let anyone bully her out of it.
SUMMARY
From The New York Times bestselling author comes a
poignant, heartbreaking, and ultimately uplifting novel
about an unlikely path to motherhood, and of two lost souls
healing each other.
1950 Tennessee, a time and place that straddles the past and
present. Ivorie Walker is considered an old maid by the town
(though she's only in her early thirties) and she takes that
label with good humor and a grain of salt. Ever since her
parents passed away, she has hidden her loneliness behind a
fierce independence and a claim of not needing anyone. But
her mother's death hit her harder than anyone suspects and
Ivorie wonders if she will be alone forever.
When she realizes that someone has been stealing vegetables
from her garden—a feral, dirty–faced boy who
disappears into the hills—something about him haunts
Ivorie. She can't imagine what would make him desperate
enough to steal and eat from her garden. But what she truly
can't imagine is what the boy faces, each day and night, in
the filthy lean–to hut miles up in the hills. Who is
he? How did he come to live in the hills? Where did he come
from? And, more importantly, can she save him? As Ivorie
steps out of her comfort zone to uncover the answers, she
unleashes a firestorm in the town—a community that
would rather let secrets stay secret. The Good Dream is
Donna VanLiere is at her absolute best.
ExcerptIvorie I didn't set out to be an old maid. When I was in my early
twenties there was, according to my mother, "still hope for
me." But when I got into my late–twenties the hope
all but left Mother's eyes. "Lord have mercy, Ivorie," she
would say. "What is going to happen to you when your pop
and I leave this earth?" I was, in her opinion, doomed to a
bed–of–nails existence without a man. Mother had always been fire and sizzle but there was
something used up about her the last two years of her life.
Her arthritis grew worse; gnarling her small, freckled hand
into the shape of a claw and taking care of Pop wore what
was left of her away. One afternoon, she came to me in the
garden where she rested that crippled hand atop her cane and
looked at me with those sad, cornflower blue eyes. "What
about Lyle Hovitts?" I nearly toppled the basket of beans I was picking. "That
melon–headed man with the fat stomach and stumpy
legs?" I threw my head back and laughed. "Mother! What
have I done to you?" She waved a bony hand in the air and rolled her eyes. "I'm
just saying, Ivorie. You're a pretty girl." I wiped the sweat off my face and squatted back down to my
work. "Well I don't know why every pretty girl in Greene
County isn't lined up outside Lyle Hovitts' door. What girl
wouldn't want that old, saggy butt crawling into her bed
every night?" "Oh, Lord have mercy, Ivorie! It's too close to Sunday for
such talk." I laughed and tossed another handful of beans into the
basket. "You started it, Mother. Lyle Hovitts. I'm
surprised you didn't say Garth Landis." "There's nothing wrong with Garth Landis." "He's a tall, lanky goon! He's got that sloped nose and
those gangly arms with the hairy hands at the end of them.
Plus—he must be fifty!" "He's a fine looking man." My gallbladder shook I laughed so hard. "Well his beauty
must be the kind that's magnified by liquor!" "He's tolerable," she said. "Not all men are tolerable but
you could tolerate Garth." I grabbed my head. "Is that what marriage is, Mother?
Tolerating somebody?" She looked at me like I was a kook. "Well, it has a lot to
do with it! If you don't get sick looking at somebody,
you're halfway there in tolerating them." I couldn't even respond to that. She started to hunch down
and I waved my hand in the air at her. "Don't get down
here. I'll have a world of a time getting you back up.
I'll finish these. You just commence to worrying about
which sad, lonely buck I need to hook my horns into." And
when she leaned her bent, tiny frame over her cane and
looked out over the garden I knew she was doing just that! Mother was my closest friend. We spent our time working in
the garden, canning, cooking and baking together and we'd
talk about Pop until we were both giggling like girls. We
loved sitting down at the table and eating a slice of pound
cake with a cup of coffee while we listened to Maxine
Harrison read the news on the radio station out of
Greenville. We'd shake our heads over the obituaries and
talk about the poor, old widow who was left behind, or make
a high–pitched noise in our throats on hearing about
the birth of a new baby. Mother didn't wear a watch; she
didn't need one, she just knew when it was coffee and cake
time. It didn't matter where we were or what we were
doing—if we were stooped over in the garden, Mother
would say, "Coffee and cake time" and we would stop our work
and sit down to listen to Maxine. I always knew when Mother
was thinking she needed a rest with a glass of sweet tea and
she could sense when I needed to pick up a book and hide out
on the back porch. I've always been too impatient with
myself and others, my expectations of them too high but
Mother just loved people, plain and simple, warts and all.
Her hope was always cell deep and child simple. My six brothers were all married with children. By the time
I was born (when Mother was 42—a miracle anywhere) my
oldest brother Henry was settled down with two children.
Shoot, at my age Mother had had six of her seven children.
Whenever I looked at her and Pop I could hear time speeding
by me. Tick: There's a man! Tock: Better grab him! Tick:
Time's running out! Tock: Too late. Morgan Hill, Tennessee is just seventy miles north of
Knoxville but it's as far from the city as it is the ocean
in my opinion. It's not big enough to be a city or even a
town; we're a community—the Morgan Hill community.
We've got Walker's Store, which my brother Henry owns, the
Langley School Building, the church, and that's it (not
exactly a hotbed for available suitors) but I can't imagine
living anywhere else. These hills and farmland are home. Pop served in Africa during the Great War and while there he
held a piece of ivory in his hand, claiming it to be the
prettiest thing he'd ever seen. He brought it home with him
and laid it on the chest–of–drawers in his and
Mother's bedroom. Mother held that piece of ivory the night
I was born. I didn't come easy. "You about ripped me
sideways to Christmas," Mother said. When Mother grasped
for the sheets her friend Nola threw the ivory into her hand
to give her something to hold onto. She and Pop named me
Sarah Ivorie. I claimed Ivorie as my first name during my
second year in school when another girl, a pinched face,
puckered lip thug was also named Sarah. She was so sour
that her cheeks turned red as a plum when she got mad. I
told my mother that from here on out I would no longer share
the name of Sarah with that brutish blob of a girl but would
only answer to Ivorie. "Pretty name for a pretty girl,"
Mother said. Imagine the heartbreak when years later that
pretty name wasn't attracting a husband. In the early years, right out of high school, the people in
Morgan Hill still held out hope for me: Which young man do
you have your eye on? Have you seen the way that Carl
Winters makes over you? Before you know it you're going to
have three or four proposals. But when I hit
twenty–four and was still living at home it threw the
whole community into crises mode. A distress signal spread
throughout it: Awkward Walker girl doomed to manlessness.
Gasp! I went from resident old maid to queen of the
downtrodden parade. There I was, sitting high on my float
and just waving and blowing kisses to the sorriest
line–up of the lonely and cripple–hearted I've
ever seen. The phone rang off the hook. Have you met my
nephew, Lenny? He's the man with dropsy over in Midway.
Have you ever met my Uncle Lew? His wife died two years ago
and he's got a house full of good chil'ren. Have you met
Harold over at the Co–op in Morristown? He's that real
nice man that works there with the eye patch. Real funny
man. Nice head of hair. For the longest time Ed Popper would visit on Sunday
afternoon, bringing three oranges with him. We didn't get
oranges too often in Morgan Hill so Ed would pick them up
each week when he drove into Knoxville to visit an ailing
aunt. Ed was five years older than me with a head as big as
a hippopotamus and a face almost as ugly. His stomach
rolled over his belt like a sack of corn meal and his feet
always looked freakishly tiny and too narrow to hold up all
that weight. We'd sit out on the front porch—Mother,
Pop, me, and Ed Popper and we'd share those oranges and talk
about the weather or who died, who was getting ready to die,
or who we thought already died and as I watched orange juice
drip down Ed's massive face I wondered why I couldn't die. Mother was thrilled with Ed's attention. He grew, these
were her words, some of the prettiest tobacco in Greene
County. Well slide a ring on my finger so I can be Mrs.
Pretty Tobacco! Ed visited every Sunday for months and sat
with his manure caked shoes pointed at opposite corners of
the porch. All I had to do was take one look at those nasty
shoes and my stomach would knot up. I have no idea why he
came back as long as he did because I never gave him any
reason to believe I wasn't anything other than completely
bored. I was as comfortable with him as a frog is in a bottle. One Sunday, Ed brought a watermelon to us and I took it from
him, marching it inside the well house where I set it on the
floor and then closed the door on it. Ed swayed from foot
to foot like an overweight pendulum for a while as Mother
groped for something to say, her mouth gaping like a carp.
Ed resigned himself to leaving and Mother rose to her feet.
She said, "You didn't offer Ed Popper one slice of his
watermelon and now he'll never long to come here again." If
I had known that's what it would take to stop Ed Popper's
longing I would have thrown his fruit in the well house
months earlier. Two years ago, in 1948, when I was twenty–eight and we
buried Pop after eighty–two years of living in Morgan
Hill, the community gave up on me. Polly Jarvis married Ed
Popper, making her Polly Popper, a ridiculous name for a
grown woman, and that marriage ended the community's hope to
marry me off. People started referring to me as, that poor
old thing. I heard them whispering at church or when I was
shopping in Henry's store. "Ivorie just sits down there and
takes care of her mother. That poor, old thing, I guess
she'll never marry." I laughed out loud at a church picnic
when I overheard two women, a cabbage–round faced one
and skinny, ropy–armed one mumbling about my plight
over a plate of fried chicken. "That poor old thing has
never been with a man," Ropy Arms whispered. "Well ain't that her good fortune!" Cabbage Face said. Mother heard people talking, too and this old maid business
worried her something awful. "Mother, I am happy," I said
time and again. "I love my job at the school and I enjoy
coming home and working in the garden and spending time with
you." She'd look at me with those aging eyes and
tree–like wrinkles that branched out from them and try
to smile and there we'd stand: me trying to convince her
that I was really okay and her not believing a word of it. Time to time she'd get real quiet and glance up into the
hills, the sun landing bright on her face, and say, "Don't
live with regret, Ivorie. It's an awful thing." For the longest time I thought she meant the regret of me
not having a man but one day something struck me on the top
part of my brain and I said, "Mother, what regrets do you
have?" Law, she was quiet! A beetle made more noise breathing than
she did. She stared up into the hills and finally said, "I
have one and it plagues me terrible." There was something in her voice that I'd never heard, or
rather, something not in it that I wanted to hear. Her eyes
and her mind were some place I couldn't go. "What is it,
Mother?" She didn't answer. "Mother?" That's how we lived
out what ended up being the last of her days. I knew she was tired and grieving. I knew her body was
frail and knobbed with bone. What I didn't know was that
her heart was weakening and breaking down. I woke up one
morning and put the coffee and sausages on like I'd done
every morning for years. Like clockwork I would hear the
padding of her feet across the wide–planked floors but
that morning the silence stretched from one room to the next
and all I heard was the deafening tick, tick, tick of the
clock hanging on the kitchen wall. The fire stopped burning
and stars fell from the sky. I buried her six months ago in
January, a month before my thirtieth birthday and on some
mornings that time feels long as a mountain's shadow but
short as a day. The void she left blows through the house
and sometimes the emptiness chokes me. Death sure can work
you over. The house is quiet now and settled in sadness. On the most
silent of nights, when the dark is cold and still I swear I
can hear her shuffling down the hall toward me with the tap,
tap, tap of her cane but when I turn to look, I know it's
just me wishing she was here. There's always some maddening
noise of emptiness here—the breeze against the
windows, the rustle of trees, a creak in the floor or from
the roof settling. Each night I wander the rooms and walk to the table with
three legs that sets in the corner of Pop's bedroom and pull
the chain on the lamp with the too heavy white base. The
amber globe colors the room in a dull shade of yellow. This
furniture is practical, sturdy, like Pop himself and while I
don't particularly like it, it's too sentimental to sell. I
reach for the dust rag I keep on the trunk at the end of the
bed and polish the knobs on the iron bed that were always
too much work to keep shiny. I move to Mother's room with
the pretty eyelet curtains in the window and the cherry
chest of drawers with the tall paw–footed legs that
held her Bible on top. I haven't moved it since she died.
I walk to the half–made quilt that lay in the rocking
chair by the window. What will happen to it now? Who would
take the care that Mother did with each square? What about
that whining kitchen door she always complained about? What
of the tractor tire that Pop said was bent or the dress
without arms that lay on the cedar chest at the end of
Mother's bed? Who would finish all this unfinished business
and what would be the point? When I'm busy during the day I don't mind the thoughts or
the quiet but never does the house seem as silent—so
much like granite, as when I clunk around the empty rooms at
night, when even the hushing noise the breeze makes sounds
like a branch of iron against the windows. These rooms hold
too many memories—too much laughter and anger and
tears and outrageous moments happened here. Some people's
lives are imprinted into a home like handprints. Seven
children left their imprint here: Grady's robust laugh,
James' disappointment, Lyle's gift of mercy, Howard's dry
and ironic humor, Caleb's flash of anger, my spirit for fun
and Henry's common sense way of meeting the day. Seven
children were born here and two people left the world here.
When Pop lay withering, the smell of his illness clung to
the curtains and towels and when I took a breath it felt as
if the house was consuming me. The morning that Mother
died, the house didn't feel like death—smells of
coffee and sausage saturated the rooms and seeped into the
sheets, making her death so jarring to me. All the imprints
of life are here but loneliness is as thick as mud inside
these walls. School let out the second week of May and besides the two
weeks at the end of the year and the two weeks prior to the
beginning of the year when I either tie up loose ends or
begin my secretarial work in the office and organizing the
school library, I get the whole summer off. It's just me
and my garden to harvest, berries to pick, Gertie to milk
and this old house to keep running. These first six months
of 1950 have gone by as slow as molasses in January; I can't
imagine what the rest of summer is going to feel like. The screen door groans as I open it and I sit out on the
back porch, looking out over the garden. Sally runs to me,
pushing her shaggy, blond head under my hand. She looks up
at me at with sorrowful, brown eyes. She misses Mother too.
We are a pitiful twosome but surely things will get
better. Or worse. I never know.
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