Dream Spinner

Mary Barrone's imagination is captured by an article about a technique that allows dreamers to control the content of their dreams. Unwilling to confront her feelings about her father remarrying, the 15-year-old uses her dreams to travel back to the 1890s. There, in lushly romantic fantasy sequences, she falls in love with a dashing playwright. At first Mary is ecstatic about this secret world, but slowly her idyllic phantasmagoria turns ugly as she is swept into a tangled triangle. Hoppe's suspenseful, dexterously written novel abounds with shimmering imagery and powerful emotions. Particularly well handled is the interplay between the understated, mundane conflicts in Mary's real family and the highly charged dissension played out in her dream world. Best of all, Hoppe leaves it to the reader to decide if it was all just a dream or if Mary really did journey back in time. This ambiguity serves both to stimulate the reader's imagination and to elevate this work above a mere problem-solving novel. Ages 12-up. (Oct.)