Beautiful Dreamer (Paperback or Softback)

His treacherous machinations exposed during the live performance of Hamlet, the brilliant and cunning Abe Badoane seeks revenge on the innocent lovers, Jude Hepler and Cory Mohney. While the infuriated Abe inches his insidious plot forward, Jude and Cory desperately try to decode Cory's medication-induced riddle, which, mysteriously, is embedded with clues to their coming fate. Her riddle bears an uncanny parallel to Old Mary's haunting vision of the rose which, strangely, correlates to the major events of Cory and Jude's lives. Under spiritual conviction that they should help the psychologically tormented Abe, the lovers magnanimously devise a plan to rescue him, even as the monstrous Abe settles on his scheme, a catastrophic-and breath-stopping-cave-in that will destroy the lovers forever. During a dream, frail Old Mary comes to the shocking realization that the beautiful dreamer in the Stephen Foster Memorial Window is not sleeping but dead. Because her dreams bear a one-to-one correspondence to Cory's life, Old Mary, now knowing that Cory is in imminent danger, frantically tries to warn her of the impending danger. But when Old Mary collapses, Jude and Cory, still not warned, head to the mine...and their horrific fate. The resulting cave-in pummels the unsuspecting couple and throws Jude into a stream-of-conscious dream reverie. "Events swirled in my mind as I floated in a twilight zone between consciousness and unconsciousness." Are his sad ruminations of a post-life Cory truth or fiction? Does their ineffably beautiful love meet its tragic doom?