It's September of 1960 and the start of your senior year in high school. Your name is Carlton Fickland, and you've just been startled awake by a gruesome nightmare. In the dream, you see a horrific accident that ends the lives of two perfectly beautiful young people and puts a third into a catatonic state. It is the third victim's screaming that catapults you from slumber. Like all other dreams, the memory of this one starts to fade quickly. Although its details soon dissolve, its impact on your life does not. You experience other dreams that are somehow tied to the first one, but are only of an old, white-haired man. Those dreams occur whenever you are at life's crossroads where the direction to proceed isn't clear. The dreams' suggestions form your reality and lead to a future that others can only fantasize. Then everything begins to unravel until you reach an end that no one could ever see coming. This psychological thriller is filled with surprising events that will have you, the reader, wanting to turn just one more page. When you reach the end, you will again read the last few pages just to savor the unexpected climax.
It's September of 1960 and the start of your senior year in high school. Your name is Carlton Fickland, and you've just been startled awake by a gruesome nightmare. In the dream, you see a horrific accident that ends the lives of two perfectly beautiful young people and puts a third into a catatonic state. It is the third victim's screaming that catapults you from slumber. Like all other dreams, the memory of this one starts to fade quickly. Although its details soon dissolve, its impact on your life does not. You experience other dreams that are somehow tied to the first one, but are only of an old, white-haired man. Those dreams occur whenever you are at life's crossroads where the direction to proceed isn't clear. The dreams' suggestions form your reality and lead to a future that others can only fantasize. Then everything begins to unravel until you reach an end that no one could ever see coming. This psychological thriller is filled with surprising events that will have you, the reader, wanting to turn just one more page. When you reach the end, you will again read the last few pages just to savor the unexpected climax.
The rain was falling so heavily that it was literally exploding on the pickup's windshield. The wipers, turned up to their highest speed, were only able to provide about a half-second glimpse through the splatter, and that only allowed the driver to see about one hundred feet of the roadway ahead. He had turned on his headlights, but it was mostly as a notice to other drivers that he was in a moving vehicle. It wasn’t helping with this heavy rainfall.
He was still going south on Lamar Boulevard and was keeping a sharp eye on Shoal Creek that ran parallel to the pavement. The water was outside its banks in places but hadn’t yet spilled onto the roadway. He guessed that if nothing impeded his progress, he could still make it home before it got too late. His only concern was getting through the 3rd Street underpass, and that depended on whether the pumps at that location could keep it from becoming flooded. If they couldn’t, he was certain that it would be closed to all traffic. He could always detour to the MoPac Expressway but that was too far out of his way. He was hoping that, even though it was coming down in buckets, the rain still wasn’t sufficient to prevent him from getting through the short tunnel under 3rd.
The driver wasn’t creeping along, and, in fact, he was going the speed limit. But to his astonishment, cars were going around him as if he was stopped. He shook his head in wonder at these Texas drivers who thought this heavy rain was just some nuisance that wasn’t intended to cause people to change their normal driving habits they used for a bright sun-filled day. However, the fact that they were moving rapidly was probably a good indicator that Lamar was open all the way across Town Lake. Normally, he would’ve slowed down to avoid creating tire spray, but he decided to postpone that until he was on the other side of the underpass. As he approached 6th Street, he peered intently through the windshield that was opaque with cascading water. He could see the lights from the multi-story buildings on both sides of 3rd Street that looked down on N. Lamar Blvd. He didn’t see any array of taillights signaling that there was water in the underpass and that traffic was being re-routed. The traffic light at 6th Street turned green without him having to even touch his brakes so, with renewed purpose, he plowed through that intersection. He could already see that there weren’t any barricades at 5th Street where they would’ve had to be located to keep cars from entering the underpass. He goosed the big Chevy pickup engine a bit in order to make the green light at 5th Street. Despite the ominous weather, he began to relax and decided that his trip home was going to be uneventful after all. With the slightly increased speed, he thought, it would be possible to barrel through any water that had gathered at the lowest point under the bridge at 3rd Street.
The man and his pickup sailed through the 5th Street intersection, and he was relieved to see that the other cars were not braking as they entered the long downward slope of roadway leading to the underpass beneath 3rd Street. The pickup had increased its speed to keep pace with traffic flow and as he reached the entrance to the underpass, he was leaning forward intently focused on the road ahead. In fact, he was so focused that he didn’t see the small car launch off the 3rd Street bridge above the overpass, nor did he determine that its trajectory would bring it onto Lamar Boulevard directly into his lane of traffic.
A split second after the little car landed on the tailgate of the man’s pickup, a falling body landed on the hood causing its face to smash into the windshield. The force of the little car’s impact lifted the front of the Chevy just enough for its front wheels to lose traction.
The man driving it had, at the sound made by the small car’s impact, turned to look rearward when the face crushed the windshield inward. Jerking his head forward, he found himself only an inch or so from the lacerated and bloody mass. Instinctively, he pushed back against the seat using his arms against the steering wheel and his feet against the floorboard. That action caused the big engine to quickly accelerate. The weight of the small car on the bed of the truck caused it to swing right and crash headlong into the wall of the overpass.
Dennis Sagebiel, a self-proclaimed hobo, Ginnie, a young girl eager to drive her new car, and Carl an ex-navy Seal, loving husband and father all collide in one fateful accident. Each action leading to a reaction that takes them on a road heading for disaster.
Carl has to discern dreams from reality, the more the dreams occur, the more real they become. A foreboding dream drives the young Carl into confusion and terror. Unable to determine if his dream is foretelling of the future.
At first glance I wasn’t sure what to expect from the beginning of the book. From a train-hopping hobo Dennis, to Ginny Gillespie - a young girl yearning to make her way in life, and Carl Fickland – a lecturer at a community college. Are they all connected in some way?
Carl survives a bizarre accident that leaves him in a fugue state in which he can faintly hear voices, but cannot communicate. Drawing the reader further into Carl’s distorted reality. Flashing back to Carl’s earlier life and his ‘special abilities’ that eats away at him mentally the older he gets. He cannot determine what or why he sees things the way he does.
The short chapters help to push the story forward faster. However, the slow progression of the ultimate plot points prevents the story from being particularly compelling or suspenseful. With the story focusing in large part on the young Carl and his life, flashing to what he is dreaming about, it takes a bit too long to get to why all of this is actually important. And in a book under psychological thriller, I didn’t really feel I could get into the mind of the character, or care about what is going on.
The book has an interesting premise, gradually revealing the ultimate story-line close to the end, and why everything was important before then. I understand what the author was trying to achieve, perhaps set in another genre, it would have been more suited and better understood. I would say this book fits into the literary fiction – the characters are put first, establishing meaningful connections with other characters, and the reader needs to dig around a bit to reveal the main plot. There isn’t much action, the focus is all around Carl, his life, and dream sequences.
For those that enjoy literary fiction with a somewhat obscure plot line, you might enjoy this read.