Wandering Stars: A Novel

Dreams function as a motif (and an element of craft) throughout Wandering Stars as a liminal space where characters can connect to their pasts, futures, and fears. When Charles ingests his morphine tincture, he is transported to traumatic memories of riding the train to Carlisle. The narrator explains this vision that “[j]ust now he is in a dream he doesn't know is a dream, which makes it real, though it leaves him across the years, and possibly, he believes it is real and so it is” (53). Dreams, and drugs, therefore, collapse both reality and time for Charles, who encounters the moments of his life that inform his present and cause him to run from it.

Orvil also experiences this collapse, mirroring his ancestor Charles even though he does not know it. He thinks, “Morphine was a trap. the thing brought dreams over into waking, and waking things back over into dreams to where you didn't know what was what. But it flew away the pain too” (167). Dreams, even those inspired by the intoxication of substances, connect Charles and Orvil, too. They are, therefore, windows into timelessness and even, possibly, a sense of being stuck even while they move characters across reality and time.