Cog Stone Dreams


Fiction - Historical - Event/Era
509 Pages
Reviewed on 05/14/2012
Buy on Amazon

This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Free Book Program, which is open to all readers and is completely free. The author will provide you with a free copy of their book in exchange for an honest review. You and the author will discuss what sites you will post your review to and what kind of copy of the book you would like to receive (eBook, PDF, Word, paperback, etc.). To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email.

This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Book Review Exchange Program, which is open to all authors and is completely free. Simply put, you agree to provide an honest review an author's book in exchange for the author doing the same for you. What sites your reviews are posted on (B&N, Amazon, etc.) and whether you send digital (eBook, PDF, Word, etc.) or hard copies of your books to each other for review is up to you. To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email, and be sure to describe your book or include a link to your Readers' Favorite review page or Amazon page.

This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Book Donation Program, which was created to help nonprofit and charitable organizations (schools, libraries, convalescent homes, soldier donation programs, etc.) by providing them with free books and to help authors garner more exposure for their work. This author is willing to donate free copies of their book in exchange for reviews (if circumstances allow) and the knowledge that their book is being read and enjoyed. To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email. Be sure to tell the author who you are, what organization you are with, how many books you need, how they will be used, and the number of reviews, if any, you would be able to provide.

    Book Review

Reviewed by Alice DiNizo for Readers' Favorite

Dessa Halom's family is poor, Jewish, and living on very little when Dessa meets Leo on a California beach near where her father's car has broken down. Leo sells her a cog stone to make a wish, and suddenly Dessa finds her lost sandals and her handkerchief filled with coins. Dessa's family's luck changes and her father goes onto wealth in the world of gambling and bets. Dessa begins to write "Dessa's Dream", a newspaper column, and she goes back in history in her cog stone dreams to write of Juan Sebastian Cabrillo, the explorer, and Father Junipero Sierra, the Franciscian monk, both men important to California history. Majoring in theater arts at UCLA in the 1950's, Dessa researches Cabel Sturmis and the beginnings of the Westbruk Wetlands in California, now endangered by man-made development.

"Cog Stone Dreams" is written with humor and a stream-of-consciousness style that will appeal to many readers who want to read something out of the ordinary. Narrator Dessa is a delightful character who tells of the decades of her life and her love of the Westbruk Wetlands that are endangered by man's insistence on making his mark, even if it drives out endangered species and creates artificial waterways. Dessa tells of her marriage to Leonard Lechman, the birth of their sons, and, of course of her cog stone dreams, of her friend Leo and his arrow-shooting grandfather. "Cog Stone Dreams" will entertain environmentalists and the readers craving something different to read.