Drives Like a Dream: A Novel »

Porter Shreve was born during the Lyndon Johnson administration, grew up in Washington, D.C., and has attended three presidential inaugurations: Carter '77, Clinton '93, and Clinton '97. In the 1970s his family started an alternative school called Our House Is a Very, Very, Very Fine House, and some of When the White House Was Ours is loosely based on that experience. Shreve's first novel, The Obituary Writer, was a New York Times Notable Book, and his second, Drives Like a Dream, was a Chicago Tribune Book of the Year. He lives with his wife, the writer Bich Minh Nguyen, in Chicago and West Lafayette, Indiana, where he directs the creative writing program at Purdue University.

Shining with heart and humor, Porter Shreve’s second novel is a witty, wry tale about a modern-day mother who finds herself at a personal crossroads at age sixty-one. In the wake of her ex-husband’s wedding to a younger woman, Lydia is eager to shake the feeling of being replaced by a newer model and sets to rebuild a sense of family with her three grown children. The trouble is, they’ve all moved about as far as they could get from the Midwest, and Lydia’s only daughter blames her for the divorce.
Undaunted, Lydia devises a complicated scheme to lure her children back to Detroit.

As Shreve’s charming characters navigate the twists and turns of family loyalties, this warm, funny, and affecting novel offers entertaining comment on modern relationships. Drives Like a Dream is a perfect novel for any mother who has struggled with the empty nest, and any daughter whose mother has driven her just a little bit crazy.

The Washington Post - Carolyn See

Drives Like a Dream is a beautiful novel, carefully put together, full of charming secondary characters, charitable to all, even -- or especially -- Cy and his prissy new wife. The tone here is comic, even genial, but the theme is sad. Everything we have, we lose. Life, despite America's feverish materialism, is ephemera. Everyone we knew or know, up to and including ourselves, will all too soon be obsolete, whether we plan for it or not.