From Houghton Mifflin Harcourt:

 

"Shining with heart and humor, Porter Shreve's second novel, Drives Like a Dream, is a smart, wry tale about a modern-day mother in the midst of a lifestyle crisis — and her outlandish attempts to get her family back. Lydia Modine is sixty-one and about to come undone. Her three grown-up children have flown the coop. She hasn't seen them together in more than a year, and now her ex-husband is about to remarry a woman half his age. And the insults keep coming: Lydia is stuck on a book she's writing about Detroit's car industry, which uncannily parallels her own life — out with the old model, in with the new. She's poured her soul into her family, only to be abandoned in the City of Dream Machines.

 

But then a twist of fate introduces her to Norm, an eco-car fanatic out to remake her and the world. Is he the answer to all of her problems, or does he hold the one secret that just might get her children back to Detroit, home for good? A warm, funny, and affecting novel that's sure to appeal to anyone who has longed for an alternate life, Drives Like a Dream confirms that sometimes when you set out for a spin, the twists and turns can be perfectly rewarding — and right."

 

Praise for Drives Like a Dream:

 

“Porter Shreve has always had a keen feel for a story and an instinct for what is interesting in the world. He is a wonderful and accomplished young writer.” — Lorrie Moore, author of The Gate at the Stairs and Birds of America

 

“Heartbreaking, funny, deeply felt, Drives Like a Dream takes us on an old-fashioned motoring tour through the life of a remarkable family. At the center of this splendid novel is Lydia Modine, a stubborn, passionate, scheming matriarch – and unforgettable. For all of its beautifully crafted surfaces, make no mistake, Porter Shreve writes, as Chekhov said: ‘out of his characters’ psychic wounds.’ He is a fine, fine writer indeed.” — Howard Norman, author of Next Life Might Be Kinder and The Bird Artist

 

“Porter Shreve once again demonstrates his talent for creating richly complicated characters and then for giving them the kind of second chances we all wish we could have in our own lives. Drives Like a Dream is impossible to put down.” — Margot Livesey, author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy and The House on Fortune Street

 

“Drives Like a Dream is a beautiful novel, carefully put together, full of charming secondary characters, charitable to all. The tone here is comic, even genial, but the theme is sad. Everything we have, we lose. Life, despite America’s feverish materialism, is ephemera. Everyone we knew or know, up to and including ourselves, will all too soon be obsolete, whether we plan for it or not.” — Carolyn See, Washington Post (full review)

 

“A bold lie and a secret that Lydia hides from her children propels Porter Shreve's novel Drives Like a Dream into a swirl of sometimes comical, often heart-rending, misunderstandings. Author Shreve is male, yet he manages to get inside the heads of the two women from whose points of view the story is told: Lydia and her only daughter, Jessica. Shreve has written an entertaining, often bittersweet, novel aimed at America's mother-daughter relationships, specifically those in which the mother feels discarded. Women who read Drives Like a Dream can be confident of learning enough to hold their own among American auto-history buffs. Then, too, men might learn something from the author's canny sense of what's going on inside a woman's head.” — Skye K. Moody, Seattle Times (full review)

 

“A shrewd observer of character…  smart and funny. [Shreve] creates a rich family history and intriguing intellectual life for Lydia and touches deep emotional veins in her relationship with her children.” — Sandra Scofield, Chicago Tribune

 

“Second-novelist Shreve endows Lydia with a touching naivete in the midst of frightening modern dating rituals, while her children, especially daughter Jessica, are well fleshed and real. Lydia's true love, however, is the absent father, and Shreve devotes a good deal of time to him and his historic design work. In the end, Detroit is the main character here, Lydia its defender, and her bringing her family together a way of preserving the status quo amid troubling modern changes. Clever and biting fiction that also serves as an amiable account of the Detroit car industry.” — Kirkus Reviews

 

“Lively…. Peppered with an assortment of memorable characters, this entertaining novel effectively combines a tale of loss and letting go with an examination of a large industry's past.” — Maureen Neville, Library Journal

 

“Shreve writes adeptly from a woman's point of view in this gently funny novel about 61-year-old Lydia Modine's efforts to keep her grown children close even as she warms to the possibility of new friendships and romance.” — Arizona Republic

 

“The author’s wit and his protagonist’s pluck sustains this tale. Drives Like a Dream is the type of book that prompts you to make a list of friends who would identify with it. Lydia Modine might be called Everywoman, if Everywoman was over 60 and starting home life anew.” — “Any Saturday,” WBAI New York City

“As the tale unfolds, Shreve narrates from the points of view of both Lydia and her 28-year-old daughter Jessica. As is often the case with mothers and daughters, the relationship is both fiercely close and fraught with conflict and unspoken resentment. Shreve, despite his gender, proves adept at plumbing the depths of this complex familial connection…. Drives Like a Dream is the kind of book that can be plowed through in one afternoon; the prose is simple yet smart, with many passages designed to provoke laughter…. an entertaining read.” — Rebecca Krasney Stropoli, BookPage

 

“As her convictions crumble, Lydia behaves increasingly erratically. How her family contends with the seismic shifts in her personality and her eventual stabilization makes this an affecting character-driven novel.” —Jerry Eberle, Booklist