Bo Grayson tells a mesmerizing story of two lives. The first is his early adult years, when he flees a tediously middle class existence in favor of the Bohemian against the backdrop of the Rockies and the Alps. The second story begins where the first ends, when he chases his fortune at the Merc and becomes matched with an enigmatic woman, Abby, and a Jungian analyst, Dr. Attfield.
Powder Dreams
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"You're going to be sucked into a no kidding, no bull, running description of a typical ski bum existence so quick you won't want to put the story down."
Mike Doyle
Skiing.about.com
"To discover that Powder Dreams was not a simple 'ski novel' was thrilling and intellectually stimulating. I was hooked from the very first line."
Greg Stump
Legendary ski filmmaker and ISHA Lifetime Achievement Award recipient
"Powder Dreams is about a lot more than skiing. It never loses momentum and moves far beyond psychological introspection. I couldn't put it down."
Kristen Lummis
Brave Ski Mom blog
"A fascinating window into what a classical analysis may be like from a patient's point of view... I thoroughly enjoyed reading Powder Dreams."
Warren Colman
Journal of Analytical Psychology
"What I found, long before Ward-Nanney's first person protagonist Bo Grayson goes into therapy, was a book that I couldn't put down. Rife with conflicts we can relate to and others that amaze, all woven together with Ward-Nanney's instinctual sense for storytelling."
David Weiss
Mr. Analysand blogger for Psychology Today
About the Author
David Ward-Nanney is the author of two novels: A Particular Obedience and Powder Dreams. He received his B.A. (Ancient Greek) from Emory University.
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More About the Author
David Ward-Nanney is the author of two novels: A Particular Obedience and Powder Dreams. He received his B.A. (Ancient Greek) from Emory University.
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is a real page turner and is full of surprises. It's the tale of a young man's quest for a life lived large. Bo's search for himself, happiness and his place in the world finds him following an ever-changing path of self discovery and wanderings. The questions he constantly asks are ones most of us are too busy to ask very often and yet leave the reader to contemplate also. Open it when you have time to do nothing but read for a couple of days because you won't put it down.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I am always looking for quality fiction that is gripping and this book did not disappoint. I enjoyed the author's previous novel and this one is even better. Both are pageturners.
Powder Dreams is about a ski bum finding his way in life. His journey is fascinating with more depth than I find in most literary fiction. A trip through the worlds of Jungian therapy, art, high finance, extreme sports, high level drug dealing, insider trading, Colorado, Utah, Europe and Chicago are only a few of the components that fascinate.
Bo Grayson has worked out his life as a ski bum perfectly. He takes temp jobs to get by and is never tied down as he pursues the best powder. Relationships are as fleeting as his residences. Surviving an avalanche and the death of a mentor are two seminal moments that force him to conclude that maybe skiing is not enough.
He also realizes he has some issues. Bo finds success and love even as he wrestles with his demons in therapy.
Just when you think you know where the novel is headed, it changes direction again. I have to admit it kept me up a few nights because I could not put it down.
A satisfying read that gives one pause for thought, I highly recommend it.
Powder Dreams is about a ski bum finding his way in life. His journey is fascinating with more depth than I find in most literary fiction. A trip through the worlds of Jungian therapy, art, high finance, extreme sports, high level drug dealing, insider trading, Colorado, Utah, Europe and Chicago are only a few of the components that fascinate.
Bo Grayson has worked out his life as a ski bum perfectly. He takes temp jobs to get by and is never tied down as he pursues the best powder. Relationships are as fleeting as his residences. Surviving an avalanche and the death of a mentor are two seminal moments that force him to conclude that maybe skiing is not enough.
He also realizes he has some issues. Bo finds success and love even as he wrestles with his demons in therapy.
Just when you think you know where the novel is headed, it changes direction again. I have to admit it kept me up a few nights because I could not put it down.
A satisfying read that gives one pause for thought, I highly recommend it.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I just finished Powder Dreams by David Ward-Nanney and found it to be a riveting tale, which I hope to see more of as contemporary people search for a life of meaning.
It's a deceptively complex book and pushes so many buttons, - so many things to address. The reader can't help but connect with Bo, despite his flaws, despite his mistakes. We want to be him when he's on the slopes, not just with him (until a certain incident); but when he entered analysis - that's when I saw his real strength. There were times I had to put the book down for a short while because I felt squirmy, as if I were sitting in that chair across from Dr. Attfield - I was terrified on a visceral level.
This book is packed with so much, it starts off kind of laid back, like Bo's lifestyle. But when it picks up, there's so much going on your head is spinning, all these undercurrents: from dangerous deep powder skiing to dealing with for floor of The Chicago stock market' from drug dealers to corporate business and the Martha Stewarts of that world; from fragmenting to finding to pull back together again.
There's commentary galore, but what it's really about is people, how people screw up, how people struggle, how people enter those liminal zones, those transitory grey areas where they don't know what's right for them anymore.
We come to like and really care about so many of the characters, Dr, Kalb, Pearson, and Claire, Abbie, even Marty, who tries to get what he wants via the wrong methods.
Bo embarks on lifestyles, a number of diverse lifestyles, widely different from each one previous, lifestyles most people envy, yet he tosses them away, a feeling that "something's not quite right, a yearning for something more, a way to feel authentic and yet still function in the adult world which he avoided longer than most. All set against a rollicking contemporary journey across the United States and beyond, into the internal world, the world of Jung, archetypes and powerful forces: tricksters and puer aeternus, the anima and the hero.When the fissures appear, and everything comes crumbling down - Bo emerges as someone who can and can't take it - he has bouts of disillusionment with those who he trusted (friends, father, bosses) or those he should respect, he feels regret when looking back on things he would change.
I come to this novel from a variety of viewpoints, early on as the mom of a son who goes for the risk taking sports, although my son chose car racing and skateboarding - he had the same yearnings, the need for freedom, for speed, for risk and the power of the human body tor endure and outwit them.
I also approach Nanney's tale simply as a reader who wants to be swept away to another kind of life (which he did) and since I'm also an author and editor, I read with a more critical eye looking how he connects with an audience, writes technically well, handles plot. As an editor, I'm always searching for a great story, but most of all, how he treats and develops his protagonist and characters, giving them obstacles and rewards to ensure their growth as human beings.
And then I come to his novel as another seeker on the path of Jung. I've read his books, as well as books about him for 29 years or more. I've gone through therapy (not with Jungians) three or four times in my life, during crisis periods and loved it, I've studied my dreams and learned to live my life using the Jungian Types, archetypes and techniques most of my adult life.
As I write, I discover my novels act as stages where my personal archetypes speak from somewhere in my subconscious, even before I realize it. Are we not all enduring the same human struggles going on over the centuries, power, will, the desire for fame, the desire for freedom, love, temptation and regret, forgiveness, hope and trust?
All of these are human realities, lived and explored from ancient times, exploding or culled form the deepest reaches of our innermost selves. A self often hidden, rejected and feared. Yet Bo, rises to the challenge, ever an adventurer, one who learns to manage fear one step at a time, he takes the more difficult path in the office of Dr. Attfield, the most challenging task he will ever attempt, one which could bury him, like Nietzsche, like Goethe, like Morrison and Cobain. he takes up the task of getting to the other side, a place he sought along, and is wise enough to seek out a guide, A Jungian analyst. My only disappointment with the book is how Bo left Dr. Attfield's sessions so abruptly, unfinished, I felt - perhaps a complicated transference with a father figure - who's to know. I didn't want the sessions to stop - as I read them, I learned about myself, recognized some of my own repressed aspects of myself, my own resistances.
The complex and hard to pin Jungian type of therapy is hard to explore in a contemporary novel, without getting the reader lost in terminology or abstract dreams. There are aspects which date back to the archaic, not compatible with what we would consider everyday life even when it enters such urban pressure cookers as the stock market and drug world, yet Nanney pulls it off. He has already led us down the fool's path on the journey and we're helpless to step off, until we too, as readers, endure the trials and powerful transformations of a system compared to the Eleusinian mysteries. I read this over the course of a few very busy days, savoring it, yet wanting to get back to it, even as my mind spiraled reassessing my own path in life. Don't miss this thought provoking contemporary novel - it could have a powerful and profound on the way you think and experience life.
It's a deceptively complex book and pushes so many buttons, - so many things to address. The reader can't help but connect with Bo, despite his flaws, despite his mistakes. We want to be him when he's on the slopes, not just with him (until a certain incident); but when he entered analysis - that's when I saw his real strength. There were times I had to put the book down for a short while because I felt squirmy, as if I were sitting in that chair across from Dr. Attfield - I was terrified on a visceral level.
This book is packed with so much, it starts off kind of laid back, like Bo's lifestyle. But when it picks up, there's so much going on your head is spinning, all these undercurrents: from dangerous deep powder skiing to dealing with for floor of The Chicago stock market' from drug dealers to corporate business and the Martha Stewarts of that world; from fragmenting to finding to pull back together again.
There's commentary galore, but what it's really about is people, how people screw up, how people struggle, how people enter those liminal zones, those transitory grey areas where they don't know what's right for them anymore.
We come to like and really care about so many of the characters, Dr, Kalb, Pearson, and Claire, Abbie, even Marty, who tries to get what he wants via the wrong methods.
Bo embarks on lifestyles, a number of diverse lifestyles, widely different from each one previous, lifestyles most people envy, yet he tosses them away, a feeling that "something's not quite right, a yearning for something more, a way to feel authentic and yet still function in the adult world which he avoided longer than most. All set against a rollicking contemporary journey across the United States and beyond, into the internal world, the world of Jung, archetypes and powerful forces: tricksters and puer aeternus, the anima and the hero.When the fissures appear, and everything comes crumbling down - Bo emerges as someone who can and can't take it - he has bouts of disillusionment with those who he trusted (friends, father, bosses) or those he should respect, he feels regret when looking back on things he would change.
I come to this novel from a variety of viewpoints, early on as the mom of a son who goes for the risk taking sports, although my son chose car racing and skateboarding - he had the same yearnings, the need for freedom, for speed, for risk and the power of the human body tor endure and outwit them.
I also approach Nanney's tale simply as a reader who wants to be swept away to another kind of life (which he did) and since I'm also an author and editor, I read with a more critical eye looking how he connects with an audience, writes technically well, handles plot. As an editor, I'm always searching for a great story, but most of all, how he treats and develops his protagonist and characters, giving them obstacles and rewards to ensure their growth as human beings.
And then I come to his novel as another seeker on the path of Jung. I've read his books, as well as books about him for 29 years or more. I've gone through therapy (not with Jungians) three or four times in my life, during crisis periods and loved it, I've studied my dreams and learned to live my life using the Jungian Types, archetypes and techniques most of my adult life.
As I write, I discover my novels act as stages where my personal archetypes speak from somewhere in my subconscious, even before I realize it. Are we not all enduring the same human struggles going on over the centuries, power, will, the desire for fame, the desire for freedom, love, temptation and regret, forgiveness, hope and trust?
All of these are human realities, lived and explored from ancient times, exploding or culled form the deepest reaches of our innermost selves. A self often hidden, rejected and feared. Yet Bo, rises to the challenge, ever an adventurer, one who learns to manage fear one step at a time, he takes the more difficult path in the office of Dr. Attfield, the most challenging task he will ever attempt, one which could bury him, like Nietzsche, like Goethe, like Morrison and Cobain. he takes up the task of getting to the other side, a place he sought along, and is wise enough to seek out a guide, A Jungian analyst. My only disappointment with the book is how Bo left Dr. Attfield's sessions so abruptly, unfinished, I felt - perhaps a complicated transference with a father figure - who's to know. I didn't want the sessions to stop - as I read them, I learned about myself, recognized some of my own repressed aspects of myself, my own resistances.
The complex and hard to pin Jungian type of therapy is hard to explore in a contemporary novel, without getting the reader lost in terminology or abstract dreams. There are aspects which date back to the archaic, not compatible with what we would consider everyday life even when it enters such urban pressure cookers as the stock market and drug world, yet Nanney pulls it off. He has already led us down the fool's path on the journey and we're helpless to step off, until we too, as readers, endure the trials and powerful transformations of a system compared to the Eleusinian mysteries. I read this over the course of a few very busy days, savoring it, yet wanting to get back to it, even as my mind spiraled reassessing my own path in life. Don't miss this thought provoking contemporary novel - it could have a powerful and profound on the way you think and experience life.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
Excellent novel.
The title of this novel, Power Dreams, is mostly MacGuffin. This is no ski novel. Powder Dreams explores how Bo Greyson finds his place in the world and the decisions that put him... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Eric Fain
Better and better
I just finished Ward Nanney's new book. I very different animal from his last outing, at least for this reader. Read more
Published 6 months ago by A. Cooper
"spellbinding"
I couldn't put this book down. It was spellbinding. Well written, on the edge of my seat kind of book.
Published 6 months ago by Silver
Finding Out Who You Are Can Take Most Of Your Life
Description:
Powder Dreams by David Ward-Nanney is a novel about Bo Grayson, a ski bum who has no life plans except to find the best "powder" on the ski slopes. Read more
Powder Dreams by David Ward-Nanney is a novel about Bo Grayson, a ski bum who has no life plans except to find the best "powder" on the ski slopes. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Allison Collins
If it's like A Paricular Obedience, I'd say skip it.
It's interesting to me that of the 5 reviews, three reviewers who give positive feedback also review obscure books. Makes me wonder if Nanney is trying to seed the reviews. Read more
Published 6 months ago by H. Wood
A book that stays with you
I'm an avid reader, and I must admit I like reading some fun, quick, mindless stories. But mostly, I enjoy books that make you think and are so much more than just a fun story to... Read more
Published 6 months ago by Marissa DeCuir
Excellent
What an excellent story for all of us who seek to find the right path, but sometimes get confused along the way. Read more
Published 7 months ago by samjo
A book that reminds you of the questions you should be asking
It seems like life goes so fast and furiously that not only is it difficult to answer the questions we need to ask ourselves on a broad and thoughtful scale, but we can't answer... Read more
Published 7 months ago by Julie
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