Dreams Of The Dead

Dreams of the Dead is a mid-19th century tale involving characters whose lives begin on different continents but whose destinies are bound by a common fate. An 1860’s account of the murder of a soldier’s family appears in a London newspaper. Shortly afterward 8-year-old Amelia Wooderker awakens in black consciousness contemplating the injustice of her premature death.

She is not alone. Friend, Jen Freeman is with her, silent in the darkness. A spiritual savant, Jen witnessed their terrifying slaughter. Her dilemma; how to prevent their murders? Her resolve; to join herself to solider, Ethan Daniels, who’s family is similarly doomed. Jen revives face down on a battle field in South Africa during the Boer wars. In temporary control of Ethan’s body, Jen is woefully inept at warfare, resulting in his injury, loss of command, and extraction. He is ferried to the cape colony home of Harland Tate to recover.

There Harland’s daughter, Mary, becomes hopelessly enamored with Ethan. Furious over her inability to seduce him, Mary attacks Ethan, rendering him comatose. While he’s unconscious, Mary repeatedly violates him. When her indiscretion is discovered, the pregnant Mary is shipped off to an asylum where she gives birth to a son and a clueless, recovered Ethan returns to England and his wife, Roheida. Increasingly, Jen’s connection to Ethan weakens before disappearing. Meanwhile in America, self-emancipated Humble Jenkins, is living in Baltimore‘s large community of free blacks.

Humble’s desire- to find and free his mother, Madre, from slavery. Befriending Elmer Jobe Fleetwood, they free Elmer’s daughter, Irma, from a Baltimore prison. Friends, Samuel and Huda, and Rachel Josephson hide Irma, but a mob’s attack forces them all to flee Baltimore for Philadelphia where their daughter, Jen, is born, while in London, Amelia is born to Chief Inspector Devlin Wooderker. He’s investigating a string of horrific murders that Jen has seen in her visions. As she grows her uncanny insight into the future haunts Jen, who struggles to make sense of what she believes will come to pass. At the pinnacle of the civil war in America, the lives of Amelia, Jen and Ethan converge, each moving toward an uncertain future. Past events shape current ones, and Jen’s visions; her dreams of the dead come closer to fruition.

Dreams of the Dead, a work of historical fiction, is a simple exercise in storytelling that explores the irony of American blacks fleeing to England in search of a better life just as millions of Europeans journey to America seeking the same. It explores questions of whether madness occurs without cause, or if it is invariably linked to past cruelty, and ponders if even murderers can experience redemptive change.