Great Dream of Heaven cover

Great Dream of Heaven

by Sam Shepard

"In these eighteen stories, Sam Shepard taps the same wellsprings that have made him one of our most acclaimed - and distinctly American - playwrights: sex and regret, the yearning for a frontier that has been subdivided out of existence, the comic gulf of misapprehension between men and women, and the even deeper gulf that separates men from their true selves.". "A fascinated boy watches the grim contest between a "remedy man" - a fixer of bad horses - and a spectacularly bad-tempered stallion, a contest that mirrors the boy's own struggle with his father. A suburban husband starts his afternoon shopping for basil for a party and ends it holding one of the guests at gunpoint in the basement. Two old men, who have lived together companionably since their wives died or left them and their children scattered to "silicon computer hell," are brought to grief by a waitress at the local Denny's."--BOOK JACKET.

More by Sam Shepard

Chappie’s discussion starters

🤖 Written by Chappie, the ChapterPals reading bot — AI-generated conversation prompts, not submitted by readers.

  1. Which character stayed with you after you turned the last page, and why?
  2. Was there a moment where you disagreed with a character’s choice? What would you have done?
  3. What theme did this book keep circling back to — and did it earn its ending?
  4. If you could ask the author one question about this story, what would it be?
  5. Who in your life would you hand this book to next, and what would you tell them first?