Randi Londer Gould

Dreamland: a Novel Randi Londer Gould

Harmon ?Buddy? Graves is drowning. At age 32, he has lost his job, the value of his home has plummeted, his marriage is troubled, and Buddy has no idea that he is about to have an encounter that will plunge his life even deeper into chaos. Book One of the DREAMLAND series opens on a blistering summer morning. Buddy is standing before his bathroom mirror shaving when the 7-year-old black girl from next door creeps up the stairs and crouches behind him, in tears. Inadvertently left home alone, she?s frightened and seeks his help. Clad only in a gaping robe, Buddy, a white man, coaxes the child down the steps and onto the front porch, holding fast to her as she sobs. Then, the next door neighbor snaps a cell-phone image. In that searing moment, with the sound of the mechanical click expanding in the air, Buddy becomes ensnared in a humiliating game of Internet blackmail. Inspired by a real life incident, this chilling event catapults readers into DREAMLAND, a contemporary story about the fragility of chasing the American dream. Much like the movie Crash, the plot of this character-driven serial drama focuses on three couples from different social classes and the ways in which their lives collide and intertwine. Written in a propulsive and muscular style, DREAMLAND delves headlong into the economic and racial tensions that underlie American life, the determination to make one?s mark, and the menace of techno vandalism that threatens to strip us of our privacy.