The Weight of Dreams

This book had me staying up more than a couple nights way past my bedtime, unable to put it down. It's really several books wrapped into one. On different levels it is a crime fiction story leading to a courtroom drama, a bitter family melodrama, an unsettling look into the shady side of horse shows, a detailed account of cattle ranching through a storm-driven winter, a tale of guilt and personal salvation, a passionate and sensual love story, a travelogue portraying the stark beauty of the Nebraska Sandhills, an examination of race relations (white and Native American), and a story of hanging onto a family ranch on the edge of bankruptcy. The author sustains all these threads by interconnecting them with considerable suspense and tension. It's like film noir - dark, brooding, always on the verge of violence or mischance. And under that interplay of tensions is a moral vision that seems often at the point of being lost completely. Agee populates her novel with a large cast of characters, using shifting points of view to explore their unfolding relationships and internal lives. With the focus of a short-story writer, she introduces and opens up incidents that seem to bring the narrative almost to a stop, while we wait to learn how these scenes take their place in the larger picture embracing all of them. While some readers may find the pace of the novel somewhat slow because of this, I was fascinated by the richness of detail and would have been happy for even more, especially exploring the resolution of the central conflict of the narrative - between its protagonist, Ty Bonte, and his nemesis, Harney Rivers.I'm happy to recommend this book. Like other reviewers familiar with the terrain and seasons of the Nebraska Sandhills, I was pleased to see this rolling region of the Great Plains and its people represented so faithfully and in an engaging story told by a gifted writer.

I was born in NE, lived there, then in other remote ranching areas. The people, times, and conditions that are masterfully described in this book are what it is all about. I doubt that those who have lived their lives in cities, on lots, among throngs of people, and within the mainstream of the American culture, can fully realize the truth and character of this story and work. I probably see these people and events through a different window than the author, but she has captured their essence. Read it and live the special life of those who look across rolling hills of nothingness and see everything!

It's been a while since I've read a book that I literally couldn't put down until it was finished. Agee writes characters--both human and animal--with depth, realism and emotion. The reader becomes a part of their world, like a spirit floating above them and within them, seeing all, feeling all. Reading this book, you *experience* what the Nebraska wind feels like, the taste of dust, the wet-earth smell of a horse ridden hard...and emotions so poignant and real that you feel your own vulnerabilities are laid open and exposed.I read many books. I clean my shelves of most of the novels, as I know I'll never be inspired to read them again. This novel is a keeper, and I'll certainly return to Ty and Dakota's world. I learned a great deal from reading Agee's story, about places I've never been and people who are kindred souls inside though they be strangers on the outside. This book is fiction, but it speaks truth that you can feel in your bones.

Jonis Agee is an exceptional artist at putting the reader in the place of the action, and the minds of her characters. In this rewarding story the reader lives the tough life of the far-from-perfect hero, Ty Bronte, and feels the sensitive love of the woman Dakota - - a match, not made in heaven, but on the perfectly discribed Nebraska sandhills. While reading this book Agee makes us use all of our senses: we ride through the hills on horses we can feel, we work cattle we can smell, we eat food and drink whiskey we can taste, we hear the birds singing, and we fall in love with Dakota and Ty Bonte. We also learn to hate Harney Rivers and delight with his reward. This is a wonderful, exciting and educational book. If you want to ride through the Sandhills go with Agee.

Jonis Agee's "The Weight of Dreams" is a well-told studyof good versus evil in a modern western setting. While each character can be labeled as a good guy or a bad guy, none are simply "types." Main character Ty Bonte is a flawed hero who pays for his early mistakes throughout his life and the life of the book. Protagonist Harney Rivers is almost purely evil. Supporting characters such as Ty's father, mother, and girlfriend, Dakota, fall at different places on the spectrum between good and evil with some characteristics of both. It is Agee's careful character construction and wealth of detail that makes the characters--and ultimately the story--believable and satisfying entertainment. Particularly notable is the way that Agee portrays Native American characters Joseph Starr, Cody Kidwell, and Latta Jaboy as humans who happen to be Native Americans. Agee writes Native American situations and characters in a factual manner without romanticizing, patronizing, or preaching. Obviously, she has done the research.The same is true of the information Agee provides as background and setting for the novel. The Sandhills of Nebraska are as Agee describes them--harsh and unforgiving, but also timeless and ethereal. The profession and lifestyle of the rancher/horse trader/ horse trainer are factually accurate. Agee's reader gains a knowledge of a unique place and a way of life as an added treat to the pleasure of reading a hell of a good story. This is Agee's best so far, and if you've not read her work before, "The Weight of Dreams" is a terrific introduction.