Waking from a Dream

A 95-year old Missourian, diagnosed with an inoperable blastoma, decides to write the story of his unusual life before he passes into history.

Chester Hanley, born in 1907 in Gault's Dip, Missouri, has had an unusual existence. When he is born, a friend of his father's donates a small orange bush as a birthing gift. It fruits every few months as the boy matures but each harvest only yields two oranges. Just like life, sometimes they are sweet, sometimes bitter and very...
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A 95-year old Missourian, diagnosed with an inoperable blastoma, decides to write the story of his unusual life before he passes into history.

Chester Hanley, born in 1907 in Gault's Dip, Missouri, has had an unusual existence. When he is born, a friend of his father's donates a small orange bush as a birthing gift. It fruits every few months as the boy matures but each harvest only yields two oranges. Just like life, sometimes they are sweet, sometimes bitter and very occasionally one is bitter and one sweet. The fruit appears, during his early years, to be a catalyst in triggering dreams and, in those dreams, Chester sees glimpses of the present and future. Quincy Rawlins, the tree donator, warns Chester and his father in no uncertain terms that the boy can benefit others from what he learns in his dreams but he can never profit from the magic himself.

In 1916, his father goes off to war but comes home a shell of his former self. Where before, he was a non-violent man, he now strikes his wife a few times. He assaults some fellow farmers and is sent to Prison in Springfield. When he returns, he is more violent and Chester's mother banishes him from the home. He goes to New York and becomes a street fighter where he is accidentally injured when he falls and strikes his head on a kerb. He comes back home as a shadow of a robust man he once was. He is put into a nursing home near Saint Louis where Chester's mother begins an affair with the treating doctor. Chester sees this in a dream and goes to the clinic, finds his neglected father and brings him back home. Later, his father suffers a brain aneurism and finally he dies.

The story encompasses the lives of Chester's three younger siblings, three ex-wives, his involvement in World War II and his ongoing battles with his mother. He becomes a best-selling author (albeit involuntarily) and travels the USA and abroad but never lives anywhere except Gault's Dip. He stops writing in the 1960's but when, in late 2002, he diagnosed with the inoperable brain tumour, he decides to write his life story.