The Inextinguishable Dream

Book excerpt: At dawn, Cass slips quietly out the front door of the Blue House, not meaning to upend the lives of those she leaves behind. Cass, a gifted but emotionally unstable mathematician, and her sister Sylvia, an artist, have never agreed on motherhood, on marriage, on how to live. But they share the belief that they must create lasting work, Sylvia welding iron sculptures, Cass solving equations to simplify the world. When Cass disappears, Sylvia must fight to keep her already fragile world from collapsing, and her precocious and deeply curious daughter, Erika, from discovering the devastating family secrets that live within the Blue House. The Inextinguishable Dream is a deeply moving story about ambition and motherhood, identity and loss, transience and memory, and the overpowering human desire to escape into delusions. Drawing on the physics of time, the author enjoins us to ponder the meaning of life, love, death, and the universe while conveying profound awe for the beauty and mystery of the world. It was inspired by the author’s experiences as a woman in the male-dominated world of science; the conflicts between motherhood, marriage, and career; and the need for those of us who do not fit the mould, especially gifted children, to be accepted.