When World War II drags Maggie Lerner¿s husband off to Europe, Maggie joins the workforce as one of America¿s Rosies. Though she savors her freedom, she is haunted by a dream that leads her to believe something terrible will happen to her husband. After the war, Sam returns home unscathed, and Maggie, who once again takes her place as a doctor¿s wife, believes the dream will disappear. … Instead, it evolves into an all-consuming world where Maggie is admired for her strength; where she can have whatever she wishes. Resenting her conventional life, she willingly surrenders to the temptation of imagined perfection.But all is not as it seems. Beneath the dream¿s flawless surface, a monster lies in wait. In an era of post-war feminism and the latest in psychoanalysis, and equipped with nothing more than an undeniable craving for independence, Maggie will need to confront this evil¿whether real or imagined¿before it destroys both her worlds.
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Leslie Tall Manning spins a tale around the Rosies, a unique group of women who had to leave their usual habitats in the kitchens of America to go work in the factories that made the war winnable for the allies in 1945, changing forever the views of these women towards their world.
Delving into the mind of one woman, Maggie, to draw a historical psychological drama with clear elements of magical realism as only a master wordsmith could do.
From the very beginning, the reader is led to the world of the Rosies, even it was by then at its end, playing on the social anxiety that those women had to contend with after shifting their lives once, and now having to do this all over again.
Sacrificing the gains that could have changed the world for these women in freedom and independence, for a wrought about image of society expected of a woman then.
The story is paced like a slow burner, carrying the reader through a soft simmer for almost half of the book, then turning the heat all the way to roast, in a rather good way.
The style of Leslie shines through the impeccable choice of words to use in the most ordinary of settings, lending them a magical power, almost heavenly poetic at times, as in this piece, “For a time they sat in silence, watching the starless sky and listening to the emptiness of her dark world. She tried to make a moon appear, but found that she could not. Without moonlight, the gazebo could as easily have been Poe’s House of Usher .”
All in all, for the fans of psychological dramas and of historically accurate fiction, this is a book written with love and meticulous research.
Absolutely a must-have for the fans of the genre.
When Maggie’s husband is sent off to war, she worries about his return which is made worse after she has a dream in which he dies in service. When he returns home uninjured, she believes the dreams will stop, but they don’t. Soon they begin to consume her until she decides to face her demons and get to the center of her own psychosis.
The premise of this book definitely had my interest because it reminded me of Coraline, where the main character is so unhappy with her real life, that the life created in an alternate universe is more appealing. What seems at the surface to be perfection, however, is just a cloth hiding the dangers beneath.
This book is definitely worth the read for all fans of psychological fiction!
Maggie’s Dream begins in 1944 with Maggie, who operates a drill press at a factory, waiting for her physician husband Sam to come home from Europe, where he’s been working during the war. When the war ends and the women working at the factory are laid off, their responses are realistically diverse: some are looking forward to becoming housewives again, while others are disappointed and even angry about losing their newfound independence. Maggie is ambivalent about the change, but soon she has a bigger concern: a disturbing dream she had while her husband was away recurs even after he returns. She begins seeing a psychiatrist without telling her husband, who thinks psychoanalysts are quacks. With the help of the fascinatingly ambiguous Dr. Germaine and some tranquilizers, Maggie delves more deeply into her dream until it becomes more vivid and compelling than her waking life.
This is a weird and wondrous book. Don’t let the deceptively simple beginning fool you: there are clues planted throughout the novel that nothing is quite what it seems. You will be asking yourself whether Maggie’s bizarre and vivid dream is just a dream, a drug-induced hallucination, or—somehow—real. The ending will surprise you and is worthy of the best psychological thrillers. It had me yelling loud enough to disturb my husband in the next room, and I stayed awake thinking about the book that night. It still haunts me days later, which is a testament to the skill of Leslie Tall Manning.
If you love history, psychoanalysis (especially dream analysis), and feminism, this book is for you!