Drives Like a Dream : A Novel

Summary

The New York Times called Porter Shreves first novel, The Obituary Writer, "an involving and sneakily touching story whose twists feel less like the conventions of a genre than the convolutions of a heart - any heart." Newsday hailed the book as "a substantial achievement," and Tim O'Brien described it as "taut, compelling, and moving . . . beautifully written, engrossing from start to finish." Shining with the same heart and humor, Shreves second novel, Drives Like a Dream, is a smart, wry tale about a modern-day mother in the midst of a lifestyle crisis - and her outlandish attempts to get her family back. Lydia Modine is sixty-one and about to come undone. Her three grown-up children have flown the coop. She hasnt seen them together in more than a year, and now her ex-husband is about to remarry a woman half his age. And the insults keep coming: Lydia is stuck on a book shes writing about Detroits car industry, which uncannily parallels her own life - out with the old model, in with the new. She's poured her soul into her family, only to be abandoned in the City of Dream Machines. But then a twist of fate introduces her to Norm, an eco-car fanatic out to remake her and the world. Is he the answer to all of her problems, or does he hold the one secret that just might get her children back to Detroit, home for good? A warm, funny, and affecting novel that's sure to appeal to anyone who has longed for an alternate life, Drives Like a Dream confirms that sometimes when you set out for a spin, the twists and turns can be perfectly rewarding - and right.

Author Biography

Porter Shreve has been on the English faculty at the University of Michigan and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He now directs the creative writing program at Purdue University.

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Excerpts

1On the morning of her ex-husbands wedding, Lydia Modine set the table for four. She had always made sure that her family ate breakfast together- orange juice, granola and milk, strawberry yogurt topped with wheat germ. "How many kids eat wheat germ?" the children used to complain. "Only the ones who live forever," Lydia would say. Now they were grown, and a year and a half had passed since Lydia had seen them together in the Detroit suburb she called home. Despite the circumstances, she planned to enjoy this time. She sliced a loaf of zucchini bread that shed baked yesterday and laid out batik napkins and earthenware bowls on the kitchen table. It was almost eight, about an hour before shed have to wake up the kids and hurry them downstairs. She had once assumed, then later hoped they would all live in the same place, even the same neighborhood. But with Ivan in D.C., Jessica in Oregon, and Davy in Chicago, this had become more of a dream. The Empire of Lydia, Jessica had said on her last trip home-Jessica, who had moved so far away for reasons she had yet to explain-Welcome to Historic Lydiaville. But Lydia wanted no such thing. Just the company of her family. Was that really so much to ask? Waking before dawn this morning, she had pulled her knees to her chest, burrowed into the slide of pillows, tossed about on the king-size bed that Cy had bought for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. The bed had only put more room between them, and sleeping alone these days on this great raft, Lydia stayed close to the edge. When she couldnt keep her eyes shut any longer she got up and went downstairs, still in her nightgown. She had heard the kids come in late last night from the rehearsal dinner; theyd left cheese and cracker crumbs and an empty jar of olives on the kitchen island. Lydia rinsed the dirty plates and dropped the jar in the recycling bin, wondering if Cy and his bride-to-be had run out of food for their guests. She hoped there had not been enough food. She hoped the toasts had been embarrassing, that the whole evening had gone badly. But she would not allow herself to think about that now. Her children had come home and here she was, up and about and for some reason excited, as if today were her day, too. The morning sunlight filtered through the kitchens sliding glass doors and spread over the table. Lydia unloaded the dishwasher and arranged the clean glasses in the cupboards, tall in the back, small up front. She wiped the countertop, swept the floor, ran a cloth over the tops of the picture frames that hung in the kitchen and along the hallway. She took a bottle of Windex to the mirror in the foyer and to the same glass doors that shed already made sparkle yesterday. She cleaned the pictures in the living room-the fences and haystacks that her father had painted in high school, the architects drawing of the Mackinac Bridge, which linked lower Michigan to the Upper Peninsula. She dusted the clock an

Excerpted from Drives Like a Dream: A Novel by Porter Shreve
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