Dream Story

Another damn dream.  But this one might have opened up a channel to a plot for a novel.  I intended to write it down yesterday, when I awoke from the dream. But I did not. So I’ve lost some detail that I wish I hadn’t. Such is life.

I won’t go into the now-fuzzy details. Instead, I’ll get right to the plot.

A German man, rearing his one-year-old child alone, is convicted of a serious crime. Before sentencing, he flees with the child, first to Portugal, then to England and, finally to the United States, collecting forged birth certificates for the child along the way. The man quickly blends in to U.S. society, using an assumed name, and (using forged papers, of course) gets a good job. A few years later, he marries an American woman.

The boy is brought up in a middle class household. He does well in school.  Life is good all the way around.  Until the father’s secret is revealed. And the boy’s world explodes.

Because his father brought him to the U.S. illegally, the authorities decide they must deport the boy back to his homeland, Germany.  The boy knows no German and has no known relatives in Germany.  But the law is the law.

A parallel plot story has been taking place all the while, with another man and another little boy with only his father. This man, though, is from Honduras and he has no criminal record. He illegally enters the U.S. and, like his German counterpart, uses forged papers to get a job. He does well in the job market, gets married to a naturalized American citizen who was born in Canada and brings up his little boy as an American citizen. When he is found out, the little boy faces the same dilemma; he is to be deported to his “homeland,” Honduras, where no one waits for him. The law is the law.

The remainder of the novel chases the stories of the two boys and explores how their efforts to fight deportation will encounter radically different challenges based on where they were born.

The story will confront the conflicts between enforcing the law and changing it.

If I pursue this, it will take a HELL of a lot of research and effort to write as an interesting story that’s not too preachy, nor too dull.