Overheard in a Dream

Description

Bestselling author Torey Hayden's novel is a fascinating study of a fractured family, a troubled child, and a psychiatrist's attempts to rescue them. Conor, aged nine, arrives in the play therapy room of child psychiatrist James Innes with the diagnosis "autistic". His mother Laura, an aloof, enigmatic novelist, can't handle him. His rancher father, embroiled in divorcing Laura, does not feel there is anything wrong with Conor. His six year old sister Morgana insists he really does see ghosts. As James becomes convinced Conor is not autistic, he is drawn first into Conor's strange world of "things the cat knows" and then into Morgana's stories of her friend the "Lion King". James is pulled most deeply, however, into Laura's world; at first that of a lonely, rather difficult woman and then, eventually, into the world of her imagination, an enthralling world that seems almost real - and that hides a terrible secret.

Torey Hayden is an educational psychologist and a special education teacher who, since 1979, has chronicled her struggles in the classroom in a succession of bestselling books. She currently lives and writes in North Wales. Find her on MySpace at www.myspace.com/torey_hayden

'Torey Hayden deserves the kind of respect I can't give many people. She isn't just valuable, she's incredible. The world needs more like Torey Hayden.' Boston Globe