Life Could be a Dream: A Meditation on Life and Death in the Fifties

The summer of 1954 begins a pivotal year in nine-year-old Robby Barnabys life. On the last day of school, he breaks his arm sliding into home plate while playing for the fifth graders in an all-star game against the sixth graders.

Baseball is his passion, and Robby excels at it, though he is younger than his classmates. He lives in a new suburb of Los Angeles called Watertown, an idyllic childhood spot with open fields and well-equipped schoolyards.

He and his older brother Cyrus are entrepreneurs, trading coins and selling newspapers. In addition, he works for his teacher, Miss Oliver. He has two younger brothers, six-year-old Stanley, who is frail and sickly, and Glyndon, who turns four in December.

On their annual vacation on Balboa Island, he learns his family is moving to a city across L.A. that offers little for kids to do. Before the move, his mother dies from surgery, leaving him in the care of his abusive father.

Everything in life has become so unreal that Robby dreams of his dead mother. Miss Oliver offers to adopt him, but his father refuses. His new home is a chicken ranch in Orcutt Park, a town with no baseball and a brutal junior high. Robby and Cyrus are miserable, and their younger brothers are lost without their mom. What will happen to these boys?

(About the Author)

Henry Rex Greene grew up in the San Gabriel and San Fernando Valleys of Southern California in the 1950s. He recently retired as an oncologist. The author of five books, he says, "This is my favorite book. It flowed from me like water." He now resides with his wife in Henderson, Nevada.