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Bridge of Dreams: A Speculative Triptych
Comprising three interlinked novellas, Bridge of Dreams: A Speculative Triptych centers around a young woman who embarks upon a spiritual quest over the span of three different lifetimes.
In Gwendolyn Greene and the Moondog Coronation Ball of 1957, the Soviets are preparing to launch a dog into orbit. The Americans, in an attempt to stay competitive in the space race, select a remarkably intelligent dog owned by a 14-year-old girl from rural Ohio. But only Gwendolyn can explain the mystery behind her beloved canine's extraordinary gifts.
Hilda Whitby and the Heavenly Light of 1857 takes place in an Ohio frontier town and concerns the trials and tribulations of a brilliant female chemist who has just lost her son to a devastating explosion. Wanted for questioning by authorities, Hilda travels along the Erie Canal, meeting an assortment of curious characters until one fateful night when she faces a strange destiny inside a cave.
In IMPETUS 13 and the Constitutional Crisis of 2057, a timid college student and an assertive professor of creative writing set out on a road trip only to discover what appears to be a flying saucer stranded deep in a remote canyon.
In Gwendolyn Greene and the Moondog Coronation Ball of 1957, the Soviets are preparing to launch a dog into orbit. The Americans, in an attempt to stay competitive in the space race, select a remarkably intelligent dog owned by a 14-year-old girl from rural Ohio. But only Gwendolyn can explain the mystery behind her beloved canine's extraordinary gifts.
Hilda Whitby and the Heavenly Light of 1857 takes place in an Ohio frontier town and concerns the trials and tribulations of a brilliant female chemist who has just lost her son to a devastating explosion. Wanted for questioning by authorities, Hilda travels along the Erie Canal, meeting an assortment of curious characters until one fateful night when she faces a strange destiny inside a cave.
In IMPETUS 13 and the Constitutional Crisis of 2057, a timid college student and an assertive professor of creative writing set out on a road trip only to discover what appears to be a flying saucer stranded deep in a remote canyon.
224 pages, Paperback
Published June 1, 2025
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June 4, 2025
I write this review as a member of Rosie’s Book Review Team (author, check here if you are interested in getting your book reviewed) and thank her and the author for this opportunity.
This is my first contact with this author, although as stated in his biography, he has written and published other books and stories before, with much success.
In fact, one of the stories in this book, which he describes as a speculative triptych, and I can’t think of a better way of defining it, had been published as a novella in its own right before, and was well received.
Before I go into more detail (and I am not going to talk too much about the specifics of the stories, because reading them is a journey the reader has to embark on solo), I can summarise how I feel about this book. I loved it. I am not sure I’d say I got all the connections and all the references it contains, but I was happy to jump in and let it take me on a wild ride, back and forth in time. Because if I try to think about how to define the experience of reading it, several words and concepts come to mind: kaleidoscopic (depending on how you twist it, the image you see changes, but some elements remain recognisable), a crazy-quilt (each fragment has a distinctive story behind it, but together they create something that might seem random, but it has a definite pattern), and it also makes me think of Escher’s impossible drawings (because you seem to know where the story is taking you, and suddenly you discover you are somewhere else).
The book contains three novellas, but also a dedication and quote (which hints at how science views anything that cannot be easily explained using the scientific method); a brief section of acknowledgments; a foreword, by M.E. Pickett, editor and publisher of a magazine where Keating has published stories before (including one in this book); the introduction; a postcript; and a section about the author.
The introduction comes with a warning from the editor, explaining that the author’s note might give clues as to what happens in some of the stories. I read it, nonetheless, and as I was reading the stories later, I didn’t regret having read it. Because, in this introduction, the author explains (realistically or not, readers can decide), how the book came to be, and also how the order of the stories was decided. Because the stories take place over a period of two hundred years, but we don’t read them (if we read them as they are published, although the author gives us permission, following his daughter’s wise advice, to read them in any order we choose), in chronological order. We start by reading what is called ‘first trip’ the story of ‘Gwendolyn Greene and the Moondog Coronation Ball of 1957’, then we read the second trip, which tells us the story of ‘Hilda Whitby and the Heavenly Light of 1857’, and we finish by reading the final trip, ‘IMPETUS 13 and the Constitutional Crisis of 2057’, so we go back and forth in time. All the stories have female protagonists, although the first one is narrated by a writer who remains unnamed and is telling us the story many years later (and yes, the story talks about a dog chosen to be sent to the moon as part of the space race between the USA and the USSR), and the other two are told in the third-person, always from the perspective of the female protagonists (however, both, Hilda and Maggie, experience events that might not correspond to reality. What reality is and what consciousness is, are some of the questions these stories keep bringing up. And there are no easy answers).
I followed the order set in the book, and it worked well for me, as I felt the final trip seemed to bring together many elements of the story, but I keep wondering if I would have felt the same no matter the order I had chosen. I am sure the stories can be read independently, but the three of them together become the triptych the author wanted to achieve, and each one of them makes you question what you had read before and the rest of the stories. And then, the postscript, which is purported to be a collection of handwritten notes by the author, left without much of an explanation, offers us an intriguing origin or creation story of how the book came to be. Make of it what you will.
The stories are beautifully written, and one of the joys of reading them is trying to find connections and identifying common elements between the characters, locations, and their experiences. We keep revisiting places, listening to stories, meeting peculiar characters, and seeing how beliefs and explanations change over time. There are elements of historical fiction (the first and second trip are anchored in recognisable historical periods, although some of the events might not be ‘realistic’ in a strict sense), and of science-fiction (although the third trip feels both, alien and quite familiar, and in that, we share Maggie’s perception and the way she feels).
I could go on and on, and I realise I haven’t given people many specifics about the stories. Still, if I had to highlight a few things, beyond the beauty of the language used to describe settings, states of mind, natural and hallucinatory (?) experiences, I would mention: the combination of recognisable emotions and relationships (friendships, guilt, loss, grief, motherhood, fear, confusion, shame, regret, trying to make amends…) with fascinating flights of fancy and unexplained events; the coming-of -age stories of three female protagonists looking for knowledge, self-definition, and control over their own lives; the search for personal truth as distinct from the official truth; the power of the mind, imagination, and creativity as opposed to materialism and rational explanations. Don’t think this means the stories are heavy-going and hard to read. They are likely to leave you thinking for a long time and wondering what exactly you have read, but they are all gripping, fascinating, and very different from each other. And there is plenty of humour and moments that will make readers smile as well.
Anybody who loves speculative fiction should give it a go. Anybody who appreciates beautifully written stories and characters, and who appreciates straying away from reality every so often, should read it. And, anybody who feels curious about the description and wants to try a new reading experience should read it as well. (As I usually advise, if you aren’t sure, read a sample of the book. I did, and I don’t regret it).
This is my first contact with this author, although as stated in his biography, he has written and published other books and stories before, with much success.
In fact, one of the stories in this book, which he describes as a speculative triptych, and I can’t think of a better way of defining it, had been published as a novella in its own right before, and was well received.
Before I go into more detail (and I am not going to talk too much about the specifics of the stories, because reading them is a journey the reader has to embark on solo), I can summarise how I feel about this book. I loved it. I am not sure I’d say I got all the connections and all the references it contains, but I was happy to jump in and let it take me on a wild ride, back and forth in time. Because if I try to think about how to define the experience of reading it, several words and concepts come to mind: kaleidoscopic (depending on how you twist it, the image you see changes, but some elements remain recognisable), a crazy-quilt (each fragment has a distinctive story behind it, but together they create something that might seem random, but it has a definite pattern), and it also makes me think of Escher’s impossible drawings (because you seem to know where the story is taking you, and suddenly you discover you are somewhere else).
The book contains three novellas, but also a dedication and quote (which hints at how science views anything that cannot be easily explained using the scientific method); a brief section of acknowledgments; a foreword, by M.E. Pickett, editor and publisher of a magazine where Keating has published stories before (including one in this book); the introduction; a postcript; and a section about the author.
The introduction comes with a warning from the editor, explaining that the author’s note might give clues as to what happens in some of the stories. I read it, nonetheless, and as I was reading the stories later, I didn’t regret having read it. Because, in this introduction, the author explains (realistically or not, readers can decide), how the book came to be, and also how the order of the stories was decided. Because the stories take place over a period of two hundred years, but we don’t read them (if we read them as they are published, although the author gives us permission, following his daughter’s wise advice, to read them in any order we choose), in chronological order. We start by reading what is called ‘first trip’ the story of ‘Gwendolyn Greene and the Moondog Coronation Ball of 1957’, then we read the second trip, which tells us the story of ‘Hilda Whitby and the Heavenly Light of 1857’, and we finish by reading the final trip, ‘IMPETUS 13 and the Constitutional Crisis of 2057’, so we go back and forth in time. All the stories have female protagonists, although the first one is narrated by a writer who remains unnamed and is telling us the story many years later (and yes, the story talks about a dog chosen to be sent to the moon as part of the space race between the USA and the USSR), and the other two are told in the third-person, always from the perspective of the female protagonists (however, both, Hilda and Maggie, experience events that might not correspond to reality. What reality is and what consciousness is, are some of the questions these stories keep bringing up. And there are no easy answers).
I followed the order set in the book, and it worked well for me, as I felt the final trip seemed to bring together many elements of the story, but I keep wondering if I would have felt the same no matter the order I had chosen. I am sure the stories can be read independently, but the three of them together become the triptych the author wanted to achieve, and each one of them makes you question what you had read before and the rest of the stories. And then, the postscript, which is purported to be a collection of handwritten notes by the author, left without much of an explanation, offers us an intriguing origin or creation story of how the book came to be. Make of it what you will.
The stories are beautifully written, and one of the joys of reading them is trying to find connections and identifying common elements between the characters, locations, and their experiences. We keep revisiting places, listening to stories, meeting peculiar characters, and seeing how beliefs and explanations change over time. There are elements of historical fiction (the first and second trip are anchored in recognisable historical periods, although some of the events might not be ‘realistic’ in a strict sense), and of science-fiction (although the third trip feels both, alien and quite familiar, and in that, we share Maggie’s perception and the way she feels).
I could go on and on, and I realise I haven’t given people many specifics about the stories. Still, if I had to highlight a few things, beyond the beauty of the language used to describe settings, states of mind, natural and hallucinatory (?) experiences, I would mention: the combination of recognisable emotions and relationships (friendships, guilt, loss, grief, motherhood, fear, confusion, shame, regret, trying to make amends…) with fascinating flights of fancy and unexplained events; the coming-of -age stories of three female protagonists looking for knowledge, self-definition, and control over their own lives; the search for personal truth as distinct from the official truth; the power of the mind, imagination, and creativity as opposed to materialism and rational explanations. Don’t think this means the stories are heavy-going and hard to read. They are likely to leave you thinking for a long time and wondering what exactly you have read, but they are all gripping, fascinating, and very different from each other. And there is plenty of humour and moments that will make readers smile as well.
Anybody who loves speculative fiction should give it a go. Anybody who appreciates beautifully written stories and characters, and who appreciates straying away from reality every so often, should read it. And, anybody who feels curious about the description and wants to try a new reading experience should read it as well. (As I usually advise, if you aren’t sure, read a sample of the book. I did, and I don’t regret it).
April 16, 2025
Literary critics and academics would go into spasms over Kevin P. Keating’s latest novel, a fertile field for them to babble about its brilliance, infusing their reviews with every one of their favorite buzzwords learned in graduate school.
The rest of us ordinary humans (smelly, tired from our day jobs that feed our families and make our muscles strong, and uneducated hoi polloi that academics think we are) would simply delight in well-written, complex prose that entertains us for several hours and teaches us something about the human condition.
Therefore, if you, the reader of this review, is a literary critic or an academic, read the immediate following paragraphs, titled “For Academic Snobs”. If you, reader, are an ordinary man or woman, go to the “For Hoi Polloi” section.
For Academic Snobs
Keating’s latest novel satisfies the deep desire for us academics to display our prowess in using polysyllabic literary terms and literary criticism phrases which may be meaningful to us (well, some of us) but are overused, tiresome, and thus insignificant to ordinary people.
For example, if one is a Marxist literary critic, then he or she would delight in the power relationships and polarities of the city vs. the country, or the uneducated in the rural environments vs. those in urban universities, or the economic struggles of the poor working classes of the nineteenth century vs. the civil rights of AI robots in the twenty-first century.
Similarly, if one is a feminist critic, then one would cheer with wild abandon the rise of female characters who break the mold of patriarchy and revolt against their oppressors and against males who use their phalluses in traditionally male occupations (in alphabetical order, even though alphabetical order is a component of the patriarchy: astronauts, chemists, farmers, pet owners [a boy and his dog, you know], space technicians, etc.) and who thus overthrow the aforementioned patriarchy to blah blah blah…male oppression, blah blah…patriarchy…blah blah…heterosexual normativity…and even more blah…whatever.
For those who are T in the LGBTQ configuration, sorry, but, while Keating’s novel is semi-fantasy, it is not a narrative of the mental illness of transgender persons. In this work, a human with a dick is a man, whether that penis is represented by a cane or a rocket ship (hmmm…size does matter, huh?).
However, like most examples of an academic immersion into the application of literary theories to a work, which reduce themselves to mere adolescent snickering of phallic and yonic jokes, I digress. Suffice it to say that academics (especially adjunct faculty in woke community colleges and universities which were once orthodox Catholic but have now fallen away from their Catholic intellectual and spiritual roots) could apply any of the other literary theories to the novel and write a sufficiently long academic article for a scholarly journal that no one would ever read but which would look real good on a curriculum vitae, especially if the article contains numerous instances of the DIE buzzwords (“diversity”, “inclusion”, and “equity”) and are coupled with LGBTQ terms, sprinkled with pro-Hamas terrorist language about killing Jews.
For Hoi Polloi
Readers who are ordinary real people and not pretentious academics, who believe in common sense, who are God-fearing, and who vote pro-life, work at their jobs and raise families or, if they choose to remain single, use their state of life for the betterment of humanity in their own unique ways, will greatly enjoy Keating’s novel as an instrument to satisfy the ancient Roman dictum that all literature should entertain and teach.
Admittedly, the narrative structure of Bridge of Dreams is challenging to follow. Yanking the reader from a present which is not current (1957 and not 2025) to a century in the past (1857) and then thrusting him or her to two centuries in the future (2057) disturbs standard in medias res.
A chronological order of time in a narrative, however, is not the intention of this work, which attempts to connect the life experiences of contemporary (1957) odd rural Ohio characters somehow with the space activities of the United States circa 1957 with a nineteenth-century odd rural Ohio prophetess and a twenty-first century odd urban Ohio graduate student in English cavorting with odd rural Ohioans who affirm the existence of space “Travelers” (aliens).
Fortunately, the disruption in narrative time is eased by allusions to common cultural symbols, the recognition of which would encourage the reader to continue the journey through the odd narrative. When a character “arrives at a murmuring brook that flows swiftly through sandy banks” (181), is that an oblique reference to Hawthorne’s babbling brook in The Scarlet Letter? The most mildly educated person, someone called hoi polloi by the academic lords and masters, would delight in the allusion, even though this reader’s perception of the connection is utterly idiosyncratic.
Similarly, the following character’s reflection on the state of her existence:
“Do you ever get the impression,” says Ms. Deepmere, “that you’re not really here? That you’re just a character in a story? And you hope the reader doesn’t get bored and close the book? Or the author stops typing mid-sentence, this sentence, the one I’m speaking right now?” (150)
Is this the fevered hope of the author himself or an allusion to Luigi Pirandello, whose Six Characters in Search of an Author was so groundbreaking in Western literature?
A final example will illustrate that some allusions are not idiosyncratic, but universal. We who are hoi polloi (especially us PhDs who are labeled such by our leftist and woke “colleagues” in academia because we are Catholic or conservative and vote pro-life or Republican) will immediately perceive a topic in the novel which the world’s experience with the China virus generated: an eminently healthy disrespect for those who argue that the scientific method is the be-all and end-all of human life (see, for example, characters’ commentary on the failures of the scientific method on pages 122 and 198).
Above all, a final take-away from reading Keating’s novel concerns self-inflated academics and the powers that be who think they know everything about human life, its beginnings, its encounters with alien forces, or humanity’s relationship with the divine. And Keating manifests this disdain through humor.
The comedic foundation of the novel leads me to see that academics and the educated classes don’t know (let’s see…how would hoi polloi say it? oh, yeah) shit. It’s as though the author (or the narrator, or the individual characters) are laughing at people who take this novel seriously, as though it's a treatise by St. Thomas Aquinas to explain humanity’s relationship with God and how time and space are factors in that human-divine relationship as the Church Fathers suggested in the first three centuries of our common Christian era.
Is this why the author, early on in the novel, seems to allude to himself when a character talks about being shoved “down the stairs like a theater critic punishing the author and principal star of an unhappy farce” (50)? If the author mocks himself thus, then we have his permission to enjoy the narrative by laughing at it.
The 203 pages of Keating’s work have satisfied my need for entertainment, sometimes laughing out loud at the impossibilities of characters’ destinies, and has given me much to ponder. The Foreword to the novel by M. E. Pickett, editor and publisher of Lost Colony Magazine, says that Keating’s novel leaves him “with more questions than answers” (xii). Yeah, OK.
In contrast, Keating’s novel impresses me with another didactic response, an answer to the contemporary malaise experienced by persons like Keating’s characters, seemingly bereft of religious faith. This is Holy Week, not only for Christians but for the entire planet, and I must reflect on the merging of space and time which occurred, not in the fictional pages of odd Ohio characters, but in the God-Man who came to Earth to save us from human pride and stupidity.
But then, this reader-response personal conclusion is compatible with the novel’s numerous free-for-all associations. If the novel can refer to a cathedral as a “medieval spaceship” (198), then contemporary readers and I will be perfectly justified in delighting in similar wordplay to challenge or to reinforce our beliefs. For that reason, Keating should be congratulated for having produced a profound creative work.
The rest of us ordinary humans (smelly, tired from our day jobs that feed our families and make our muscles strong, and uneducated hoi polloi that academics think we are) would simply delight in well-written, complex prose that entertains us for several hours and teaches us something about the human condition.
Therefore, if you, the reader of this review, is a literary critic or an academic, read the immediate following paragraphs, titled “For Academic Snobs”. If you, reader, are an ordinary man or woman, go to the “For Hoi Polloi” section.
For Academic Snobs
Keating’s latest novel satisfies the deep desire for us academics to display our prowess in using polysyllabic literary terms and literary criticism phrases which may be meaningful to us (well, some of us) but are overused, tiresome, and thus insignificant to ordinary people.
For example, if one is a Marxist literary critic, then he or she would delight in the power relationships and polarities of the city vs. the country, or the uneducated in the rural environments vs. those in urban universities, or the economic struggles of the poor working classes of the nineteenth century vs. the civil rights of AI robots in the twenty-first century.
Similarly, if one is a feminist critic, then one would cheer with wild abandon the rise of female characters who break the mold of patriarchy and revolt against their oppressors and against males who use their phalluses in traditionally male occupations (in alphabetical order, even though alphabetical order is a component of the patriarchy: astronauts, chemists, farmers, pet owners [a boy and his dog, you know], space technicians, etc.) and who thus overthrow the aforementioned patriarchy to blah blah blah…male oppression, blah blah…patriarchy…blah blah…heterosexual normativity…and even more blah…whatever.
For those who are T in the LGBTQ configuration, sorry, but, while Keating’s novel is semi-fantasy, it is not a narrative of the mental illness of transgender persons. In this work, a human with a dick is a man, whether that penis is represented by a cane or a rocket ship (hmmm…size does matter, huh?).
However, like most examples of an academic immersion into the application of literary theories to a work, which reduce themselves to mere adolescent snickering of phallic and yonic jokes, I digress. Suffice it to say that academics (especially adjunct faculty in woke community colleges and universities which were once orthodox Catholic but have now fallen away from their Catholic intellectual and spiritual roots) could apply any of the other literary theories to the novel and write a sufficiently long academic article for a scholarly journal that no one would ever read but which would look real good on a curriculum vitae, especially if the article contains numerous instances of the DIE buzzwords (“diversity”, “inclusion”, and “equity”) and are coupled with LGBTQ terms, sprinkled with pro-Hamas terrorist language about killing Jews.
For Hoi Polloi
Readers who are ordinary real people and not pretentious academics, who believe in common sense, who are God-fearing, and who vote pro-life, work at their jobs and raise families or, if they choose to remain single, use their state of life for the betterment of humanity in their own unique ways, will greatly enjoy Keating’s novel as an instrument to satisfy the ancient Roman dictum that all literature should entertain and teach.
Admittedly, the narrative structure of Bridge of Dreams is challenging to follow. Yanking the reader from a present which is not current (1957 and not 2025) to a century in the past (1857) and then thrusting him or her to two centuries in the future (2057) disturbs standard in medias res.
A chronological order of time in a narrative, however, is not the intention of this work, which attempts to connect the life experiences of contemporary (1957) odd rural Ohio characters somehow with the space activities of the United States circa 1957 with a nineteenth-century odd rural Ohio prophetess and a twenty-first century odd urban Ohio graduate student in English cavorting with odd rural Ohioans who affirm the existence of space “Travelers” (aliens).
Fortunately, the disruption in narrative time is eased by allusions to common cultural symbols, the recognition of which would encourage the reader to continue the journey through the odd narrative. When a character “arrives at a murmuring brook that flows swiftly through sandy banks” (181), is that an oblique reference to Hawthorne’s babbling brook in The Scarlet Letter? The most mildly educated person, someone called hoi polloi by the academic lords and masters, would delight in the allusion, even though this reader’s perception of the connection is utterly idiosyncratic.
Similarly, the following character’s reflection on the state of her existence:
“Do you ever get the impression,” says Ms. Deepmere, “that you’re not really here? That you’re just a character in a story? And you hope the reader doesn’t get bored and close the book? Or the author stops typing mid-sentence, this sentence, the one I’m speaking right now?” (150)
Is this the fevered hope of the author himself or an allusion to Luigi Pirandello, whose Six Characters in Search of an Author was so groundbreaking in Western literature?
A final example will illustrate that some allusions are not idiosyncratic, but universal. We who are hoi polloi (especially us PhDs who are labeled such by our leftist and woke “colleagues” in academia because we are Catholic or conservative and vote pro-life or Republican) will immediately perceive a topic in the novel which the world’s experience with the China virus generated: an eminently healthy disrespect for those who argue that the scientific method is the be-all and end-all of human life (see, for example, characters’ commentary on the failures of the scientific method on pages 122 and 198).
Above all, a final take-away from reading Keating’s novel concerns self-inflated academics and the powers that be who think they know everything about human life, its beginnings, its encounters with alien forces, or humanity’s relationship with the divine. And Keating manifests this disdain through humor.
The comedic foundation of the novel leads me to see that academics and the educated classes don’t know (let’s see…how would hoi polloi say it? oh, yeah) shit. It’s as though the author (or the narrator, or the individual characters) are laughing at people who take this novel seriously, as though it's a treatise by St. Thomas Aquinas to explain humanity’s relationship with God and how time and space are factors in that human-divine relationship as the Church Fathers suggested in the first three centuries of our common Christian era.
Is this why the author, early on in the novel, seems to allude to himself when a character talks about being shoved “down the stairs like a theater critic punishing the author and principal star of an unhappy farce” (50)? If the author mocks himself thus, then we have his permission to enjoy the narrative by laughing at it.
The 203 pages of Keating’s work have satisfied my need for entertainment, sometimes laughing out loud at the impossibilities of characters’ destinies, and has given me much to ponder. The Foreword to the novel by M. E. Pickett, editor and publisher of Lost Colony Magazine, says that Keating’s novel leaves him “with more questions than answers” (xii). Yeah, OK.
In contrast, Keating’s novel impresses me with another didactic response, an answer to the contemporary malaise experienced by persons like Keating’s characters, seemingly bereft of religious faith. This is Holy Week, not only for Christians but for the entire planet, and I must reflect on the merging of space and time which occurred, not in the fictional pages of odd Ohio characters, but in the God-Man who came to Earth to save us from human pride and stupidity.
But then, this reader-response personal conclusion is compatible with the novel’s numerous free-for-all associations. If the novel can refer to a cathedral as a “medieval spaceship” (198), then contemporary readers and I will be perfectly justified in delighting in similar wordplay to challenge or to reinforce our beliefs. For that reason, Keating should be congratulated for having produced a profound creative work.
June 13, 2025
Kevin P. Keating is at the same time a well-kept secret and a celebrated writer. Celebrated in the sense that his first novel was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Books Prize / First Fiction Award, and that he is a recipient of the Cleveland Arts Prize and the James Thurber House Writer-in-Residence Award. Secret in the sense that his work deserves to be better known than it is—especially because it is so sheerly readable. If you want a book that is at once intellectually stimulating, artistically sophisticated, and yet a real page-turner, I recommend Bridge of Dreams: A Speculative Triptych, so titled because it consists of three interlinked novellas.
Bridge of Dreams reads like a story that Borges, who is mentioned in the text, might have written after reading C.G. Jung—who is also mentioned indirectly in the text by way of an in-joke—especially Jung’s long essay on UFO’s. Borges and Jung agree that “It is one weird universe,” as a character in the novel says. Or, as Hamlet says, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in Horatio’s philosophy. The place of Horatio’s philosophy, in other words the counter-position, is taken in the novel by scientific materialism, which reduces all life to predictable mechanism because consciousness cannot be explained materialistically. Sophisticated personal AI’s play a role in the third of three novellas, which is set some decades in the future, representing an “intelligence” in which consciousness has no role. Like Borges and Jung, Bridge of Dreams prefers the opposite philosophy that all reality is psychic—which means that we are such things as dreams are made on.
The novellas tell the stories of three women who are actually somehow the same woman, one of them in 1857, one in 1957, one in 2057. In one tour de force moment in the last novella, each of them dreams about one of the others dreaming one of the others, around in a circle. The old alchemical symbol for this expanded reality is the ouroboros, the serpent with his tail in his mouth. The vehicle for this theme of an expanded reality is a conspiracy plot about UFO’s, which means that it takes the risk of becoming mere kitsch. It is saved from that fate by the quality of the writing. Sentences can be savored for the rhythm of their prose, and telling details, both historical and contemporary, flash with vividness. It is saved from sentimentality by its toughminded message that a sense of wonder is no safeguard against tragedy. Many if not most of the characters have been trapped by circumstances, and are not rescued by any happy ending. There is also a constant sense of just how sadistically cruel human beings can be.
Keating thanks his daughter Rose for being the Muse whose support and enthusiasm brought this story into being. She believed in it, and her faith was justified. It is appropriate that this novel about three remarkable women should have a woman as its inspiration.
Michael Dolzani, Professor of English
Bridge of Dreams reads like a story that Borges, who is mentioned in the text, might have written after reading C.G. Jung—who is also mentioned indirectly in the text by way of an in-joke—especially Jung’s long essay on UFO’s. Borges and Jung agree that “It is one weird universe,” as a character in the novel says. Or, as Hamlet says, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in Horatio’s philosophy. The place of Horatio’s philosophy, in other words the counter-position, is taken in the novel by scientific materialism, which reduces all life to predictable mechanism because consciousness cannot be explained materialistically. Sophisticated personal AI’s play a role in the third of three novellas, which is set some decades in the future, representing an “intelligence” in which consciousness has no role. Like Borges and Jung, Bridge of Dreams prefers the opposite philosophy that all reality is psychic—which means that we are such things as dreams are made on.
The novellas tell the stories of three women who are actually somehow the same woman, one of them in 1857, one in 1957, one in 2057. In one tour de force moment in the last novella, each of them dreams about one of the others dreaming one of the others, around in a circle. The old alchemical symbol for this expanded reality is the ouroboros, the serpent with his tail in his mouth. The vehicle for this theme of an expanded reality is a conspiracy plot about UFO’s, which means that it takes the risk of becoming mere kitsch. It is saved from that fate by the quality of the writing. Sentences can be savored for the rhythm of their prose, and telling details, both historical and contemporary, flash with vividness. It is saved from sentimentality by its toughminded message that a sense of wonder is no safeguard against tragedy. Many if not most of the characters have been trapped by circumstances, and are not rescued by any happy ending. There is also a constant sense of just how sadistically cruel human beings can be.
Keating thanks his daughter Rose for being the Muse whose support and enthusiasm brought this story into being. She believed in it, and her faith was justified. It is appropriate that this novel about three remarkable women should have a woman as its inspiration.
Michael Dolzani, Professor of English
June 18, 2025
In his foreword, the author’s editor/publisher talks about subverting the reader’s expectations. I can’t say I had any expectations coming into this novel except for what was advertised on the cover: “A Speculative Triptych.” Three stories promising a departure from mundane reality in one volume: it sounded like a bargain. I wasn’t disappointed. But trying to pin down the three interwoven novellas into a genre is like chasing after wisps of fog. It’s quite the elusive read. In fact, glancing back through the pages, I’m not always sure what I’ve read.
Religion plays a part. There’s a rather long discourse on St. Paul’s pilgrimage to Virgil’s tomb that the narrator in the “First Trip” overhears as part of a Bible study group. This seems to provide his impetus in making a pilgrimage of his own to Cleveland to rescue his friend’s multitalented dog from a planned spaceflight to launch the first U.S.-born animal life into orbit in 1957 as part of the Space Race with the Russians. Then there’s a long apocryphal story of the long-lived Biblical figure of Enoch, recruited by a seraphim to trim the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, who loses a finger in the process. I’m not sure how this fits in except to muddy the distinction between good and evil, just as the distinction between reality and virtual reality is blurred in this third and “Final Trip” one hundred years later in 2057, during which the story is recounted.
In between is a “Second Trip” that takes place along the Erie Canal in 1857 involving the quest of a scientist whose experiment with explosives obliterated her laboratory and killed her adult son. Suffice it to say, her quest involves sealing off a Bridge of Dreams to prevent mere mortals from crossing through a portal into an otherworldly dimension. And this is only one of the motifs that binds the three stories together: the notion of extraterrestrials referred to as “Travelers,” unearthly observers who may or may not be figments of the imagination. Of the characters’? Of the author’s? It’s hard to say.
There are other ties that bind, both major and minor. Major: all three novellas are set in the northeast Ohio village of Heavenly Hill. Minor: a ’57 Plymouth Fury that is still in running order in 2057 as it was in 1957 and which turns out to be the main character’s brother’s car from the first story transplanted to the third. To identify all of the Easter Eggs would require careful rereading. For now, I’m content to have experienced an initial reading that was by turns eccentric, magical, elusive, and … subversive.
Religion plays a part. There’s a rather long discourse on St. Paul’s pilgrimage to Virgil’s tomb that the narrator in the “First Trip” overhears as part of a Bible study group. This seems to provide his impetus in making a pilgrimage of his own to Cleveland to rescue his friend’s multitalented dog from a planned spaceflight to launch the first U.S.-born animal life into orbit in 1957 as part of the Space Race with the Russians. Then there’s a long apocryphal story of the long-lived Biblical figure of Enoch, recruited by a seraphim to trim the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, who loses a finger in the process. I’m not sure how this fits in except to muddy the distinction between good and evil, just as the distinction between reality and virtual reality is blurred in this third and “Final Trip” one hundred years later in 2057, during which the story is recounted.
In between is a “Second Trip” that takes place along the Erie Canal in 1857 involving the quest of a scientist whose experiment with explosives obliterated her laboratory and killed her adult son. Suffice it to say, her quest involves sealing off a Bridge of Dreams to prevent mere mortals from crossing through a portal into an otherworldly dimension. And this is only one of the motifs that binds the three stories together: the notion of extraterrestrials referred to as “Travelers,” unearthly observers who may or may not be figments of the imagination. Of the characters’? Of the author’s? It’s hard to say.
There are other ties that bind, both major and minor. Major: all three novellas are set in the northeast Ohio village of Heavenly Hill. Minor: a ’57 Plymouth Fury that is still in running order in 2057 as it was in 1957 and which turns out to be the main character’s brother’s car from the first story transplanted to the third. To identify all of the Easter Eggs would require careful rereading. For now, I’m content to have experienced an initial reading that was by turns eccentric, magical, elusive, and … subversive.
December 3, 2025
There is so little that can be said about a novel as miraculous of Bridge of Dreams. It’s a book so dear to me that it’s transcended its place as a piece of physical media, and become a piece of my heart, a part of my being. There is also much of it that shall remain secret to the reader before opening the book. But I shall try…
The crowing jewel of this triptych comes first; Gwendolyn Greene and the Moondog Coronation Ball of 1957. At a glance, it’s a story about how few things in this world matter more than a girl and her dog. Upon further investigation, the reader finds that century after century, lifetime after lifetime, it’s a story of enduring love, the agony of heartbreak, the mystery of life, and that indescribable feeling of intuition.
Indescribable that is to most; Kevin P. Keating possesses the unique ability to capture experiences of the human condition that are typically unquantifiable. He dares readers to abandon the concept of time as linear, but rather as a patchwork quilt. His writing so brilliant, his ideas so adventurous, his characters so gorgeous it’s a miracle you’re left feeling quietly introspective, rather than foolish. Bridge of Dreams is a work of authorship so masterful, a beautiful, weep-worthy story of three women is told over the foundation of what it means to be a conscious being.
I encourage readers to go in blind, read the stories in their publication order, and prepare to question how many previous lives you’ve lived, and how many more the future has in store. I equally wish for everyone to read this novel, and secretly pray it stays my best-kept secret. I have read this story in countless forms, dozens of times, over the course of many years, and not once has it wavered in its ability change the way I move through life. It’s a thrill to be the daughter of the brilliant mind that wrote Bridge of Dreams. And the greatest honor of my life to be the unofficial editor and trusted keeper of this dazzling novel.
The crowing jewel of this triptych comes first; Gwendolyn Greene and the Moondog Coronation Ball of 1957. At a glance, it’s a story about how few things in this world matter more than a girl and her dog. Upon further investigation, the reader finds that century after century, lifetime after lifetime, it’s a story of enduring love, the agony of heartbreak, the mystery of life, and that indescribable feeling of intuition.
Indescribable that is to most; Kevin P. Keating possesses the unique ability to capture experiences of the human condition that are typically unquantifiable. He dares readers to abandon the concept of time as linear, but rather as a patchwork quilt. His writing so brilliant, his ideas so adventurous, his characters so gorgeous it’s a miracle you’re left feeling quietly introspective, rather than foolish. Bridge of Dreams is a work of authorship so masterful, a beautiful, weep-worthy story of three women is told over the foundation of what it means to be a conscious being.
I encourage readers to go in blind, read the stories in their publication order, and prepare to question how many previous lives you’ve lived, and how many more the future has in store. I equally wish for everyone to read this novel, and secretly pray it stays my best-kept secret. I have read this story in countless forms, dozens of times, over the course of many years, and not once has it wavered in its ability change the way I move through life. It’s a thrill to be the daughter of the brilliant mind that wrote Bridge of Dreams. And the greatest honor of my life to be the unofficial editor and trusted keeper of this dazzling novel.
July 19, 2025
4.5 out of 5 stars
These three novellas are connected, sometimes more than others, but each one can be read separately.
With all of them I adored some parts, becoming totally immersed in the wonderful storytelling. The writing itself is stunningly good, the prose atmospheric and illustrative of the time. I particularly liked the 1950s small town America setting of the first tale, which I thought was the best one. I loved how there were so many stories within the stories, a literary style that has long been a favourite of mine; I like to have my reading mind taken off on meandering tangents.
The stories are all set around the fictional town of Heavenly Hill in Ohio, spanning a time period of 200 years (1857 - 2057), with connections throughout. Now and again I felt that the 'speculative' aspect could have been reined in a little as a few of the ideas did not seem fully formed. Then again, perhaps that's the nature of the genre.
Before the stories begin there is a long introduction and explanation of why the stories were written, which I confess to only skimming; I prefer to read this sort of text at the end of a book. Like a character's backstory, the 'why' only matters to me once I've got to know what's inside. It's a hard book to review, without summarising each novella, and sufficient information is given in the blurb. Maybe the only question that needs answering is 'did I enjoy this?'. I did. I looked forward to getting back to the book each time I left it, and my eagerness to turn the pages only waned a little in the last of the three. I liked the little surprise story at the end, too.
Bridge of Dreams is unusual, immersive and clever. I recommend!
These three novellas are connected, sometimes more than others, but each one can be read separately.
With all of them I adored some parts, becoming totally immersed in the wonderful storytelling. The writing itself is stunningly good, the prose atmospheric and illustrative of the time. I particularly liked the 1950s small town America setting of the first tale, which I thought was the best one. I loved how there were so many stories within the stories, a literary style that has long been a favourite of mine; I like to have my reading mind taken off on meandering tangents.
The stories are all set around the fictional town of Heavenly Hill in Ohio, spanning a time period of 200 years (1857 - 2057), with connections throughout. Now and again I felt that the 'speculative' aspect could have been reined in a little as a few of the ideas did not seem fully formed. Then again, perhaps that's the nature of the genre.
Before the stories begin there is a long introduction and explanation of why the stories were written, which I confess to only skimming; I prefer to read this sort of text at the end of a book. Like a character's backstory, the 'why' only matters to me once I've got to know what's inside. It's a hard book to review, without summarising each novella, and sufficient information is given in the blurb. Maybe the only question that needs answering is 'did I enjoy this?'. I did. I looked forward to getting back to the book each time I left it, and my eagerness to turn the pages only waned a little in the last of the three. I liked the little surprise story at the end, too.
Bridge of Dreams is unusual, immersive and clever. I recommend!
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