The Closest Things to Dreams: short story collection

An artist dreaming too much, a dancer forsaking the one thing she loves, a widow plottingto kidnap the boy she lost, a woman afraid pleasure's passed her by, a boy and the rat he can't save, the Renaissance man realizing his limits, a magician who can guarantee dreams but not happiness, a troubled teen's obsession with Paul McCartney, girls forced to grow up in ways they don't want. . . In these moving, well-crafted, and resonant stories, Jane M. Newby's characters struggle to learn the difference between possibilities and illusions, innocence and acceptance, believing and knowing, between dreaming life and living it.