A Woman Is Dreaming

This is a story of women; a cosmos of women`s experience and connections across time and culture- their worlds, their histories, their conflicts and perils. It is also a story of love, death and grieving: and of courage, resilience and healing. The book is divided into 7 stories that intersect through dreams, images and timeless themes. The book as a whole tells a story, yet each individual story also tells a story. As the stories move through time and space and as the women move through their individual lives, there exists an otherworldly dream sequence that is only sometimes conscious. This is a book about dreams and passions, and about prophesies and destinies.

Xing Hua, a young Chinese woman, bereaved by the loss of her baby daughter, departs on a magical journey across Sichuan province in China, with an elderly peasant woman on an unlikely quest to find the mystical Emerald City. Through their unusual friendship, the young woman rediscovers her joy and the old woman learns to make peace with her life.

Susan, a woman from Montreal, is bringing her mother`s ashes back to Ireland. Along the way she is forced to confront aspects of her self and her lineage that go beyond her own life story, and that ultimately touch the edges of unknown worlds.

Tajmira, a young woman who is part of a now-vanished nomadic tribe on the Negev desert in the 11th century, sets out on a journey that goes beyond time and space, in an epoch where time and space were not as rigid as they are today.

Mariane, a young mother caught up in the hysteria of the witch hunt of 17th century Europe, is sentenced to death. Her story attests to the enduring beauty of spirit that has the ability to rise above both life and death, even as death is always the unavoidable and irrevocable end to every life.

Golda, the wife of a Rabbi who is travelling out her village in Russia after a pogrom in the mid 19th century, leaves her husband dead and her daughters scattered. Her journey leads her to a solitary life at the edge of the world, and through the deep love for her children and the grandchildren that she will never meet, is forced to confront her own life decisions and to make peace with God.

Natasha, a young Russian Jewish woman who had been living in Paris during the Nazi occupation, is brought to the edge of death. Her journey later brings her to America where she lives two lives with the ever present and interchangeable realities of her passion and her pain.

Sparrow is a 6 yr old girl whose world is filled with the magic and joy of simply being alive, even as she is surrounded by grief at every turn. She has the ability, through the teaching of her grandmother, to turn life into stories, and through her imagination is able to create a most beautiful world.

These 7 stories unravel and weave together in mysterious ways; situated in the realities of their own time and space. But they are also stories that attest to the unbridled power that has the ability to break through the thin layer of everyday reality in order to reach out and touch infinity.

I would like to thank all those who have told me their stories, and their ancestor's stories, and allowed me to write them. All those who have given me insight into my stories, and helped me to travel and research. All those whose experiences I have portrayed, and who have helped me to portray them well. I do so humbly, and with immense gratitude and understanding of my cultural limitations and blindsights. Thank you. Tashmyra Crowe.