A fellow English major turned bartender recommended Peter Behrens' The Law of Dreams, a book that I most definitely would never have picked up of my own accord. This just isn't the type of book I would normally go for. When Baylis mentioned it to me initially, I was uninterested and wrote it off as a book about a topic that I wasn't really into reading about. But then she continued to rave about it and brought it in for me to borrow and I gave in to peer pressure.I was immediately sucked in though, as Behrens is a great writer. His descriptions of Ireland are so gritty and detailed that sometimes I could almost smell what Fergus, the main character, was smelling. The Law of Dreams tells the story of a young Irish boy orphaned by the potato famine and his subsequent journey to America. There is nothing pretty or uplifting about this story. Tragedy seems to follow Fergus where ever he goes and he seemingly has the worst luck with women. Based upon the characters in this novel, I would tell you never to trust a red headed lass.
Behrens conducted a lot of research for this book, which was very, very loosely based upon his own family history and toward the end, when Fergus was making the crossing to North America, definitely made me think about my own Irish heritage and when my own ancestors made a similar crossing. I'd like to know the Collins story. How did we end up in Alabama? When did we cross the ocean? Do we even know these facts about our family history?
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