by Robert A. Benjamin

Did you ever build a model airplane that would really fly, or know someone else who did, or maybe wish, much later, that you had dared to try? In the fifties, when I was growing up, all the boys tried to make them, but you weren t supposed to take any of that very seriously. I did, and in spite of being laughed at and even bullied, I refused to give up. One day I discovered that a few dedicated people had actually built radio controlled airplanes. Talking about that got me laughed at even more, so what else could I do but promise myself that by the end of my senior year in high school I would build one of my own and make it fly? A Gift of Dreams is a classic American coming-of-age tale cast well outside the ordinary mold, a memoir with roots deep in the intensity of youthful experience. It invites the reader to share my challenge of making a remote controlled vehicle fly in the days when even NASA had trouble doing it, while still trying to act like a normal teenager worried about working at the town drugstore and getting into college and handling the joys and perils of young love and emerging sexuality, all in the unique context of society in a New England seacoast village. Today, thoughtful readers everywhere are looking for optimistic, engaging storytelling that endorses positive values, and they will find it here. A Gift of Dreams is about a lot more than building model airplanes that will fly...it is about finding the courage in daring to be different.