Promo: The Dream Collector (Book 1: Sabrine & Sigmund Freud) by R.w. Meek
Today, I'm delighted to welcome Historium Press author, R.w. Meek to Ruins & Reading. We're sharing an excerpt from his fascinating novel, The Dream Collector (Book 1: Sabrine & Sigmund Freud). Have a look!
The Dream Collector is currently on blog tour with The Coffee Pot Book Club. Check out the other fabulous posts here!
Excerpt:
“Tour of the Temple of Science”
The first door we entered brought us to stunned confusion; instantly engulfed in dense swirls of mist, we became lost to each other. Dr. Charcot, as well, disappeared into a thick miasma of steam. The disembodied voice of our leader called out a warning: “Do not wander, stay close!”
Everyone invisible, immersed in a white fog, our ears were filled with the strident shouts and shrill screams of unseen women. It was such a frightful cacophony of tortured shrieks that my heart chilled. I imagined myself in a vaporous netherworld where bands of spectral harpies were in dreadful flight.
Through the rolling clouds came Charcot’s assurance: “Be patient.”
I strained to see. There were vague shapes ghostly walking and as the white veils began to lift, the steam shredding, they became Salpêtrière’s nursing assistants, male and female. We were in an enormous room, a hippodrome, amidst a vast scattering of iron tubs. Charcot emerged, distinct in the dark suit and chimney hat, as though etched in ink upon vellum.
“Salpêtrière's Hydrotherapy Department!” he thundered.
Submerged in the hundreds of tubs were women, glisteningly naked, madly screaming or struggling to escape the waters, but burly male attendants forcibly held them down. Some in the tubs simply wept or whimpered, some behaved like playful children, slapping the water and jabbering gentle nonsense.
I waited with Freud and every other intern for Charcot to make sense of the chaos spread before us—
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Blurb:
The Dream Collector immerses the reader into the exciting milieu of late 19th Century Paris when art and medicine were in the throes of revolution, art turning to Impressionism, medicine turning to psychology. In 1885, Julie Forette, a self-educated woman from Marseilles, finds employment at the infamous Salpêtrière, hospital and asylum to over five thousand disabled, demented and abandoned women, a walled city ruled by the famed neurologist and arrogant director, Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot.
Julie Forette forms a friendship with the young, visiting intern Sigmund Freud who introduces her to the altering-conscious power of cocaine. Together they pursue the hidden potential of hypnotism and dream interpretation. After Freud receives the baffling case of the star hysteric, Sabrine Weiss, he is encouraged by Julie to experiment with different modes of treatment, including “talking sessions.” Their urgent quest is to find a cure for Sabrine, Princess of the Hysterics, before Dr. Charcot resorts to the radical removal of her ovaries.
In Paris, Julie finds a passion for the new art emerging, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, and forms friendships with the major artists of the period, including Pissarro, Monet, and Degas. Julie becomes intimately involved with the reclusive Cezanne only to be seduced by the “Peruvian Savage” Paul Gauguin. Julie is the eponymous ‘Dream Collector’ collecting the one unforgettable, soul-defining dream of the major historical figures of the period.
Buy Link: Universal Buy Link
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