Land of Dreams: A Novel

By Kate Kerrigan

Set in 1940s Los Angeles, the compelling final installment in New York Times bestselling author Kate Kerrigan’s sweeping immigrant trilogy begun in Ellis Island and City of Hope—a story of family, love, danger, and ambition in Hollywood during World War II.

Irish immigrant Ellie Hogan has finally achieved the American Dream. But her comfortable bohemian life on Fire Island, New York, is shattered when her eldest adopted son, Leo, runs away, lured by the promise of fortune and fame in Hollywood. Determined to keep her family intact, Ellie follows him west, uprooting her youngest son and long-time friend Bridie.

In Los Angeles, Ellie creates a fashionable new home among the city’s celebrities, artists, and movie moguls. She is also drawn into intense new friendships, including talented film composer Stan, a man far different from any she has ever met, and Suri, a beautiful Japanese woman and kindred spirit, who opens Ellie’s eyes to the injustices of her country.

While Leo is dazzled by Hollywood’s glitz, Ellie quickly sees that the golden glamour masks a world of vanity and greed. Though she tries to navigate them around the dangers of their new home, she will not be able protect them from an even more terrifying threat: war.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Oct 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9780062340542

Kate Kerrigan

Kate Kerrigan is the author of three previous novels. She lives in Ireland with her husband and their two sons.

Reviews for Land of Dreams

[angela9vaughn · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I read this book as an ARC, and totally forgot to write a review about it then. So, here is my short but sweet opinion. The story was a good read. The subject matters and events could hold your attention, but I had a hard time really getting past either the character personalities or the writing style.used to describe and develop them. Everyone seemed to be over dramatized and a little shallow in a way. And there was just way too much past and present comparisons for my taste. BUT like I said, the story was a good one.

[pjhess · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

3rd book in the series. I liked the part about early Hollywood but did not feel this one was as good as the first two.

[txwildflower_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I enjoyed this book mainly because of the time era......the 40's. It described this era and Hollywood at it's best. A mother follows her sixteen year old son who has run away to Hollywood to become a movie star with the intention of bringing him back home to New York and boarding school. However when she finds him she realizes his dream is real and decides to stay in Hollywood and let him pursue his dream. The characters were strong and the story kept your attention.

[margaretdebuhr · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Early Reviewers edition. This book is the last in the sequel so the author is repetitive in many parts of the book in order to keep new readers up to date. This was annoying at times. However, the really enjoyed the characters, time period and location of the story.

[alandee_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A mother's determination to protect her son is the basis for the third book in the immigrant trilogy featuring Ellie Hogan as our protagonist. She leaves her artist haven on Fire Island to chase after her teenage son who has run away to Hollywood. Ellie creates a new home for her family in Los Angeles in support of her son's artistic endeavors. In spite of her doubts of the sallowness of the Hollywood environment, Ellie allows her child to grow and offers a safe harbor from any disappointments. This was an entertaining story of Hollywood in the early years of the forties and a glimpse into the workings of the powerful movie studios.

[jsprenger_4 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is the third book in Ms. Kerrigan's trilogy. I will admit I have not read the other two previous books, Ms. Kerrigan does help readers catch up with the events in this book with her constant references to what has occurred earlier. In summary, after Leo runs away from his boarding school, and ends up in Hollywood. His mother finds him in L.A, and then joins him. I must admit I struggled with this book because I found Ellie, arrogant, entitled, and over bearing. Although this is set in the 1940's, very little is focused on the issues during WWII, and the challenges that the world faced.

[curvymommy · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I read this book not having read the first two books in this series. So I expected I might be a little bit lost in the beginning, and I was OK with that. However, that was definitely not the case, since the first 50(!) pages were pretty much a rehash of everything that took place in the previous books...to the point that it got tedious and I was ready for the story to start.Ellie is a twice-widowed woman raising her two adopted boys while working as an artist in New York during the early 1940s. When her oldest son disappears from school, and it turns out he's fled to Hollywood to become an actor, Ellie follows him west, to bring him back. However, she ends up staying in Hollywood, bringing her family with her. I found Ellie to be a pretty unlikeable woman. Harsh, unfriendly, cold, and always thinking she was better than everyone else. She treated Stan, her love interest in Hollywood, pretty horribly. I felt absolutely no connection to her and could really care less what happened to her.This book was filled with constant descriptions of things that happened in the previous books. As if the author felt the reader couldn't possibly remember something that we had already been told 75 pages previously. How many times did we need to be told how Ellie came to adopt Tom? Or how Ellie was so wonderful because she founded a woman's homeless shelter in New York?For a book that takes place during World War II, there was very little mention of the war! Except for a handful of pages where Ellie's new half-Japanese friend Suri talks about the horrors of the internment camps, and a bizarre side trip to Manzanar, all of which seemed incredibly contrived, as if the author felt she had to somehow shoehorn in something about the Japanese internment camps to prove her book was set during wartime.Overall, I cannot recommend this book, and I don't think I'm going to go back and read the first two books in the trilogy. If you've already read the first two, you may want to give this a try, just to finish the arc. Otherwise, give this one a pass.

[yukon92 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Having read the first 2 books in this trilogy, I was looking forward to continuing this Irish- American story. It seemed a bit of a letdown after the other 2 books. It is not a book that makes me want to read more by this author.

[bookchickdi · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Readers first met Ellie Hogan in Kate Kerrigan's novel Ellis Island. We followed Ellie as she married the love of her life John, came to America to make money for an operation John needed, and was emotionally torn as she built a life in New York while missing her husband back home.The second book in the trilogy, City of Hope, covered Ellie's life back home in Ireland with her husband. It was a difficult adjustment, moving back to a farm in rural Ireland after living in an exciting, vibrant city. After John's death, a grieving Ellie comes back to New York and opens a home for people who lost their homes during the Depression, eventually building an entire community.The third book in the trilogy, set in 1942, is Land of Dreams, which finds a middle-aged Ellie living on Fire Island working on her art. Ellie is a painter, and she has a bit of a following. She has two sons, Leo, the sixteen-year-old son of her second husband Charles, and seven-year-old Tommy, who was left as a baby by his mother in Ellie's care.When Leo runs away from his boarding school, Ellie tracks him down in Hollywood, where he hopes to find a career as an actor in the movies. She intends to take him back home, but after finding him, she decides to give him a chance at the screen test his young agent Freddie has set up for him.Leo gets a small role in a war movie, and Ellie doesn't have the heart to make Leo give up his dream. As an artist, she understands Leo's desire to express himself. She brings Tommy and Bridie, the elderly woman whom she first met when they both worked as household staff years ago in New York, to Hollywood.The family sets up in Hollywood where they seem to enjoy the sunshine lifestyle. This is a different Ellie than we have seen before. In the first two books, she was working and struggling to build a life for herself and her community. Now Ellie is middle-aged, and responsible for her two sons.Ellie had miscarriages during her marriage to John, which brought her great sadness. She never thought she would have children, and now her life revolves around her children. Many women who have children will understand Ellie's feelings about her children growing older and needing her less.This Ellie is more contemplative, more reflective about her life. She doesn't have to work so hard, she has more time to think. She met an older man, a music composer, on the train to Hollywood, and they continued their relationship in Hollywood.Kerrigan's characters are so multi-dimensional, even the minor ones. Stan, the composer, loves Ellie, but he is not willing to pine for her if she will give him no chance. Freddie, the agent, is not some sleazy Hollywood type, but a young man with a goal and he becomes a part of Ellie's family. Even Freddie's actress-girlfriend, who could be a golddigger, is interesting.Many times in trilogies, the main character remains stagnant from book to book. In Kate Kerrigan's Ellis Island series, we experience the growth and depth of Ellie from young girl desperately in love with her husband and willing to move to America to save his life, to grieving young widow who channels her grief by building a community for those in need to middle-aged mother who loves her children enough to give them their dreams and in turn find her own.

[pattymclpn · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the intriguing story of a very bright and talented young woman who is trying to raise her two children. It is unique in that they are not her biological children. It is the story of her life and friends and her experiences during the 1940s. I thought that this was a well written book with interesting characters that held my attention. It is not exactly action packed. It starts off slow, but then picks up. I think I read the whole book in 3 days. I was touched by part about Suri and the internment camp. I would like to see a whole book about this subject. It is interesting what this country did to Japanese American citizens. This is something you don’t hear much about. I liked Ellie she is a strong woman and very independent for her time. Ellie doesn’t seem to show much remorse or reflection in regards to her actions through out the book. She did what she felt she needed to do and she did not look back. I enjoyed this book. I give this novel a 4 out of 5 stars.

[lauriebrown54 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

It’s 1942 and twice-widowed Ellie Hogan’s teenaged son Leo has run away from boarding school. It doesn’t take much sleuthing to find out that he’s taken the train across country from New York to Los Angeles: to Hollywood. He’s determined that he will be a star. Ellie immediately jumps on a train and follows him, to discover him living with another young man, Freddie, who is trying to become the world’s first actor’s agent, and Freddie’s girlfriend, Crystal, who fancies herself a starlet. They are holed up at the Chateau Marmont, with little money and no jobs. Ellie allows herself to be convinced that Leo has a real chance at getting a part in an upcoming film, so she takes a room for herself and Leo and figures it’ll only be a few days before this nonsense is out of the way and they can head home. To her surprise, Leo gets a part and is put into acting classes at the studio. Stuck in California for the time being, Ellie rents a house and sends for her younger son, Tom, and her aging friend and housekeeper, Bridie, and settles in for a few months while the film is being shot. She ends up taking in Freddie and Crystal, mothering them just like she does her sons, even though this means they have taken over the room she’d designated as her artist’s studio. For Ellie, being a mother is the most important thing in her life- she admits that she married her second husband in large part so she could be a mother to his son Leo. She is willing to put her own life- both professional and personal- on hold for her sons, feeling that she doesn’t have enough time or love to go around. Whether this means quashing a relationship that seems to have a lot of potential or giving up her painting, she’s fine with it. Ellie acts like a very entitled woman. She barges in everywhere and expects everyone to listen to her, whether it be a studio executive or the military head of a relocation camp where a Japanese friend of hers is interned. She comes by this trait not from being born into money; she worked her way up from nothing during the Depression. She just feels she has to do her best to try and help her friends and family- even when she doesn’t have all the information and they desperately do not want her to intervene. The book jacket makes the story sound exciting: it mentions glamour and glitz and having to protect her family from the threat of the war. In reality, Ellie encounters the glitz only occasionally, and the war is little threat to her family, although her own actions make things difficult for both her Polish born boyfriend and her Japanese friend. The story really doesn’t have much action in it. Told by Ellie in the year 1950, a lot of it is backstory (this book is the third in a trilogy) and her emotions and thoughts. I found I could not get really interested in the book; I couldn’t make a connection with Ellie or any of the other characters. They were flat and not fleshed out. Bridie as the Irish housekeeper was very nearly a stereotype. I found myself impatient with the book, wanting to get it read and have it over with so I could go on to something more interesting There is also a (small) problem with some anachronistic language – ‘networking’ and ‘lifestyle’ weren’t used in 1950 that I know of- but that may have been fixed in the final edit.

[bookgirljen · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I read this book not having read the first two books in this series. So I expected I might be a little bit lost in the beginning, and I was OK with that. However, that was definitely not the case, since the first 50(!) pages were pretty much a rehash of everything that took place in the previous books...to the point that it got tedious and I was ready for the story to start.Ellie is a twice-widowed woman raising her two adopted boys while working as an artist in New York during the early 1940s. When her oldest son disappears from school, and it turns out he's fled to Hollywood to become an actor, Ellie follows him west, to bring him back. However, she ends up staying in Hollywood, bringing her family with her. I found Ellie to be a pretty unlikeable woman. Harsh, unfriendly, cold, and always thinking she was better than everyone else. She treated Stan, her love interest in Hollywood, pretty horribly. I felt absolutely no connection to her and could really care less what happened to her.This book was filled with constant descriptions of things that happened in the previous books. As if the author felt the reader couldn't possibly remember something that we had already been told 75 pages previously. How many times did we need to be told how Ellie came to adopt Tom? Or how Ellie was so wonderful because she founded a woman's homeless shelter in New York?For a book that takes place during World War II, there was very little mention of the war! Except for a handful of pages where Ellie's new half-Japanese friend Suri talks about the horrors of the internment camps, and a bizarre side trip to Manzanar, all of which seemed incredibly contrived, as if the author felt she had to somehow shoehorn in something about the Japanese internment camps to prove her book was set during wartime.Overall, I cannot recommend this book, and I don't think I'm going to go back and read the first two books in the trilogy. If you've already read the first two, you may want to give this a try, just to finish the arc. Otherwise, give this one a pass.

[carolee888 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Land of Dreams by Kate Kerrigan is a very difficult book to rate. This is the third book of a trilogy. I didn’t realize that when I picked it. I had not read the two previous books. The first part of this book was difficult to get through. The author carried catching up the readers to the extreme. She told so much about the two previous books that I didn’t want to proceed with the rest of the book. She spent a good deal of telling about her life on Fire Island, so much so that I was getting bored.Then she got a call that her son was missing from boarding school. If I was writing this book, I would have started with that page! Then she stopped dwelling in the past and started telling what happened. Her son was friends with a boy at boarding school in upstate New York suddenly had gone missing. Of course, she was panicky! She packed quickly and arranged to get there by train. When she gets there, she finds that her son is in love with the idea of being a star in Hollywood. At this point you finally get some of the flavor of what it was like in Hollywood in those early years. She decides to stay because that is where her family is. At that point, I started to like this book. I couldn’t feel like I related to the main character as she did things that I would not have done. At points, I thought there were too many famous people’s names in this story. She does think about several questions: What is the true mark of friendship? What is love? How are you best a mother? When to let go? I think I would recommend this book to people interested in historical fiction for the 1940s in the Los Angeles area but I advise them to skim the first part of the book so that they don’t get bogged down in her repetitious recall of memories. I was a little disappointed that she did not have to face the situation of losing her son to going off to fight the war.I received this Advanced Reading Copy as a win from LibraryThing and that in no way influenced my thoughts or feelings in my review.