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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.
