Reading: Diane Simmons: Dreams Like Thunder
Dreams Like Thunder takes place on a small Eastern Oregon farm between Baker and Hells Canyon. The story is set over a couple of days in 1959, but part of the family seems less in touch with the twentieth century than with the myth of their own pioneer past. The myth varies according to who is doing the telling. It is up to Alberta, who is ten years old and heir to both the farm and the myth, to discover some truth behind the stories—a truth that will help her know who she is and what her own future might be.
Diane Simmons is a Westerner—descendant of pioneers on the Oregon trail and raised in the high desert of Eastern Oregon. She earned a BA in history from the University of Oregon Honors College. After working as a newspaper reporter for several years in Oregon, Idaho, Washington, and Alaska, Diane moved to New York City, where she earned an MA in creative writing, and a PhD in English literature. Diane is professor emerita at City University of New York and recently served as a Fulbright Teaching Fellow in the Czech Republic. She has authored numerous works of award-winning fiction, non-fiction, journalism, and criticism including her 2016 non-fiction The Courtship of Eva Eldridge: A Story of Bigamy in the Marriage Mad Fifties, reissued as an Audible Audiobook in 2024. Diane resides in Maplewood, New Jersey.
Kim Field is a writer and musician based in Portland, Oregon. Field is the author of two books—The Blues Dream of Billy Boy Arnold, published by the University of Chicago Press, and Harps, and Heavy Breathers: The History of the People's Instrument, published by Cooper Square Press. His writing has appeared in The Village Voice, Blues Review Magazine, The Journal of Country Music, and The Seattle Weekly. Field performs regularly with his Portland band, The Perfect Gentlemen.
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