The Dreamers

chapter 1.

At first, they blame the air.

It s an old idea, a poison in the ether, a danger carried in by the wind. A strange haze is seen drifting through town on that first night, the night the trouble begins. It arrives like weather, or like smoke, some say later, but no one can locate any fire. Some blame the drought, which has been bleeding away the lake for years, and browning the air with dust.

Whatever this is, it comes over them quietly: a sudden drowsiness, a closing of the eyes. Most of the victims are found in their beds.

But there are some who will tell you that this sickness is not entirely new, that its cousins have sometimes visited ours. In certain letters from earlier centuries, you may find the occasional reference ­decades apart ­to a strange kind of slumber, a mysterious, persistent sleep.

In 1935, two children went to bed in a Dust Bowl cabin and did not wake for nine days. Some similar contagion once crept through a Mexican village ­El Niente, they called it: the Nothing. And three thousand years before that, a Greek poet described a string of strange deaths in a village near the sea: they died, he wrote, as if overcome by sleep ­or, according to a second translation: as if drowned in a dream.

This time, it starts at the college.

It starts with a girl leaving a party. She feels sick, she tells her friends, like a fever, she says, like the flu. And tired, too, as tired as she has ever felt in her life.

chapter 2.

The girl s roommate, Mei, will later recall waking to the sound of the key turning in the lock. Mei will remember the squeak of the springs in the dark as her roommate ­her name is Kara ­climbs into the bunk above hers. She seems drunk, this girl, the way she moves so slowly from door to bed, but the room is dim, and ­as usual ­they do not speak.

In the morning, Mei sees that Kara has slept in her clothes. The narrow black heels of her boots are sticking out beneath the blankets of the upper bunk. But Mei

Karen Thompson Walker is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel The Age of Miracles, which has been translated into twenty-seven languages and named one of the best books of the year by People, O: The Oprah Magazine, and Financial Times, among others. Born and raised in San Diego, Walker is a graduate of UCLA and the Columbia MFA program. She lives with her husband, the novelist Casey Walker, and their two daughters in Portland. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at the University of Oregon.

The Dreamers is harrowing, riveting, profoundly moving, and beautifully written. In a word, this book is stunning. Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven

Walker offers a novel bursting with ideas, probing the scary and tantalizing possibilities at the edges of our existence. USA Today

In The Dreamers, Karen Thompson Walker s second novel, dreams are . . . both more dangerous and more powerful than the Greeks could have ever imagined. . . . Walker uses evocative language to describe the almost bewitching nature of contagion. The Washington Post

Walker writes beautifully about the things that define how a society either endures or collapses in crisis, a theme that may never have been more timely than it is now. Minneapolis StarTribune

[An] imaginative, disturbing, and ultimately spellbinding narrative, which asks provocative questions about our concepts of time and connection, and the bounds of possibility for life on earth. Vogue

You ll be mesmerized by this well-constructed, vividly drawn exploration of the concept of dreams versus reality. Marie Claire 

With mellifluous prose, Walker traces victims experiences (awake and asleep), along with how their family members, friends, and doctors respond to the crisis. Real Simple 

The Dreamers is a beautifully written novel that is powerful, thoughtful, and entirely original. PopSugar

Richly imaginative and quietly devastating . . . Walker jolts the narrative with surprising twists, ensuring it keeps its energy until the end. This is a skillful, complex, and thoroughly satisfying novel about a community in peril. Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Frighteningly powerful, beautiful, and uncanny, The Dreamers is a love story and also a horror story a symphonic achievement, alternating intimate moments with a panoramic capture of a crisis in progress. Karen Russell, author of Vampires in the Lemon Grove