Queen of Dreams

Chitra Divakaruni

I dream the dreams of other people, so I can help them live their lives. Rakhi's mother once spoke those words to her daughter when she was a young girl. But now Rakhi is an adult - one in need of help to live her life. An artist and divorced mother living in Berkeley, California, she is struggling outwardly with a world in transition. Internally, she is torn between the lure of her mother's past in India and assimilation in modern America. But then, after her mother's death, Rakhi discover her dream journals, writings that prise open the long-closed door on her past, divine her identity and bring new colour to her emotional landscape. She begins to discover, as her mother innately knew, that 'a dream is a telegram from a hidden power'. But not everything about Rakhi's present world is hidden. Cultural obstacles at odds with modern 'American values' -- whatever they are -- is about to find fresh renderings and a 'terrorist', a label that launches them into a nightmare they could never imagine. Around their story, Chitra Divakaruni has woven a vivid and enduring dream; one that reveals hidden truths about the world we live in.