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There's nothing quite like sinking into a Nicholas Sparks novel. You know that you're in for a love story about the bond between a salt-of-the-earth guy and a sophisticated-but-sweet girl that breaks your heart as it edges ever so gently into poignance and sometimes darkness. Yet as I began reading Sparks' latest, Dreamland, I realized that it would be different. Although it follows the budding romance between Colby, who gave up his dream of being a musician to run the family farm, and Morgan, a spectacular singer intent on achieving stardom in Nashville, there's something else: Beverly and her six-year-old son, Tommie, on the run from her dangerous husband.
If this scenario sounds familiar, then it's because Sparks' Safe Haven was also about a woman fleeing an abusive spouse. But in Dreamland, Sparks goes much deeper. He gives us every visceral detail of Beverly's struggle: the sweat that soaks her disguise in the merciless southern sun as she walks miles to buy what little food she can afford for Tommie, the terror when a cashier comments that she looks familiar, and has she been in the store before? The risk she takes hitchhiking to Tommie's school to deliver his forgotten lunch. Her exhaustion from scrubbing the ramshackle house that she rents in the middle of nowhere, no questions asked. Beverly's anxiety is so palpable it's painful, and as I read, it made me anxious too.
Sparks switches between Colby's and Beverly's stories throughout the novel, finally combining them in a powerful denouement that answers every question. Although I had an inkling of the twist, the full scope of it, once revealed, was a shocker. And I thought what I always think when closing a Sparks book: Sparks isn't a master of just love stories, he's a master of life stories, showing us what it means to be human and happy (or not) through his fate-fueled narratives.
Even if that sometimes means battling nightmares before reaching the peace of dreamland.
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