Explore Grief and Healing in This Literary Dreamscape

The Blue in Your Eyes by Humberto Garcez

A most unusual and intriguing novel that, just like dreams themselves, blends elements of reality with imagination and desires.

“Dreams are a cryptic maze, but the emotions they stir up are real.”

The first time I spoke with author Humberto “Bear” Garcez, he was telling me about his new book based on very detailed recollections of one of his own dreams. That book is the recently released The Blue in Your Eyes, a most unusual and intriguing novel that, just like dreams themselves, blends elements of reality with imagination and desires.

An Unexpected Connection

The book itself, wouldn’t you know it, is about a man, Oliver, vividly recalling one of his dreams and relating it to a group of dinner guests at his home. The dream is about an elderly man, Carl, who, while sitting on a park bench in Seattle, suddenly comes to the rescue of a 7-year-old girl who was about to be struck by an errand drone.

After saving Janice, the little girl, Carl realizes her parents are nowhere in sight. However, when Carl looks up hoping to find a woman who initially seemed to be near the girl and possibly connected to her, the woman has vanished.

While the prudent step might have been to take Janice to a police station as a girl separated from her parents, Carl is entranced by Janice, her curiosity and her outgoing personality and is not so quick to part with her. They proceed to wander through parts of the city experiencing its beauty and its excitement.

When the day ends and he informs his wife Christina of what’s happened, she immediately suggests that Carl could be charged with abducting the girl. Yet when an emergency at work causes Christina not to come home, Carl delays returning Janice to the authorities. Carl and Janice seem to have a special bond.

Dreams vs. Reality

One thing that stands out for me is the great detail of the story — or, in this case, the great detail of Oliver’s dream. He tells it as if he has written his own novel, remembering everything from the smallest pieces of the scenery to the innermost workings of the characters. How can so much info be gleaned from a dream?

Are dreams like that? Can we remember every nuance and backstory and not just the running theme? And what of the substance: Usually manifesting itself in the first person. Often illogical or even incoherent — the more incredible, then, when one stops to write them down lest they forget them altogether.

SimplePsychology.org writes how Sigmund Freud considered dreams to be the royal road to the unconscious as it is in dreams that the ego’s defenses are lowered so that some of the repressed material comes through to awareness, albeit in distorted form.

In this book, it’s easy for readers to forget it’s a dream, short of the author taking the narrative back to the dinner party and allowing guests to reflect on what they’d heard so far and cast their observations. This helps us gain our footing and perspective.

Captivating with Delectable Twists

And if all dreams were so dramatic — Garcez has more than one surprise or two up his sleeve — and they are real doozies, offering some delectable twists that will make readers stop and ponder. And drop their jaws. Unless, of course, Garcez is simply recounting his own dream, telling his own story rather than setting about to write a captivating piece of fiction.

How much of The Blue in Your Eyes is autobiographical for Garcez? The author calls dreams “a blend of memories, emotions and aspirations … After all, the mind has a remarkable way of weaving together the threads of our experiences, even in the realm of dreams.”

Is The Blue in Your Eyes a story written by Humberto Garcez? Or is it his own story?

Read this wonderful work and be your own judge.