What is “Dreamland” by Sara Dessen about?
Dreamland by Sarah Dessen From Sarah: Even while I was writing it, I knew Dreamland was different. It had a lot of the elements of the other books, but something kept pulling it deeper, to a place that for me, as a writer, was really challenging. Originally, the story of Caitlin and Rogerson was in another novel I’d written, one which turned out to be mostly terrible. (I have quite a few of those, gathering dust in my office.) But then, on Christmas Day of 1997, I was reading a book and the word dreamland, used in a simple sentence, jumped out at me. I just had this image of a mother standing in a bedroom door, in silhouette, saying something about seeing you in dreamland, and the story started to fall together. I picked the parts about Caitlin and Rogerson from the other book and shaped a story around them, adding in Cass and her story, as well as the other subplots of the book. It was very slow going: I wasn’t teaching that semester, and I wrote every day, really taking my time. Ther
