Love and Dreams

by Barberi Paull Feit

      Love is a power. It can be elusive. And the characters of Love and Dreams are touchingly human. It is their reality as human beings — just as it is our own — to learn to protect the love they have and to respect its fragility. They are explorers who have set out on an expedition in search of love. They send us accounts of their discoveries, their experiences, and the creative solutions by which they have survived the adventure. They give the rest of us an advantage — they have alerted us. As a result, when we travel through that terrain, we will not lose time in finding our way or in bewilderment. We will not be slowed by a lack of courage, for they have given us guidance and inspiration.

Barberi Paull Feit has a view of the inner landscape, which is perceptive, profound and intelligent. She interprets what makes us human with sympathy and good humor. Throughout the many years of her practice in psychotherapy, thousands of patients have benefited from her insight and her vision. Now we have the advantage of sharing in her observations on the way of life and the way of love.
—Mary-Leighton Land Smith

      In the story of Love and Dreams, the elegantly drawn characters filling the pages of the book are related by their privileged social circumstances. But their bond is not one of class. They are bound by their commitment to each other; by the responsibility they feel for each other - their love and their friendship.

      At the center of the story is Ogden Graves, a talented and complex man whose search for meaning takes him on an odyssey of years; Bandit and Charlotte Hutchins — charismatic, socially and professionally ambitious; Henley and Hayes Buchanan — renegade bluebloods whose genius keeps them on the edge of expulsion from The Social Register; Andy Morgan — scion of the Morgan dynasty in America, Alice Gonzalez — an impassioned and independent socialite, Vera Whitmore — quietly playing the role life had assigned her, and others.

      I am confident that you will enjoy and learn from this book. It is both a compelling story of wonderfully multifaceted characters and a self-help book in the form of fiction to assist us — much more interestingly — in the struggle of understanding love.

      Love and Dreams is published through our Illumina Imprint and by Xlibris. ISBN numbers: Hardcover #1-4134-0305-0; Paperback #1-4134-0304.

      Hemmings Knight
      Managing Director
      Illumina, Inc.

Love and Dreams

By Barberi Paull Feit

Love and Dreams is a romance set in the context of New York society in a period that spans the last century. The story is woven into New York’s richly textured social history and the rituals established by New York’s first settlers: the WASP gentry and the German-Jewish aristocracy. Love and Dreams tells of friendship and of love. Love is powerful and the characters of this story —Ogden Graves, Bandit and Charlotte Hutchins, Henley and Hayes Buchanan, Andy Morgan, Alice Munro Gonzalez, Vera Whitmore, and others— are touchingly human. A story of friendship and love is always a story of loss. People die. But Love and Dreams is a celebration of everyday miracles, and of the lasting power of love in all of the different forms in which it comes to us. The characters of Love and Dreams live in a world of unqualified privilege and experience. As we join them in their struggles and triumphs, we understand them only too well. Their names may be Ogden or Charlotte or Andy. But they are really ourselves.

"It’s about time she shared with us her remarkable insight into human life . . what she has seen to be true of women . . and, of particular note in Love and Dreams, to be true of men."
—Mary-Leighton Land Smith

"As a composer, Barberi has lived among musicians. She has drawn the character of Ogden Graves from this experience. Ogden Graves in the novel is a conductor of concert music. I found this character particularly fascinating Although absorbed in the world of sound, the author describes this complex man: "Ogden belonged more to the silence than to anything or anyone else."
—Pascal Evrille