Where Dreams Live

WHERE DREAMS LIVE
A Surfing Love Story

With an open heart and a willingness to forgive
You can go home again

WHERE DREAMS LIVE

Where Dreams Live is a surfing love story about a long-buried secret, the gift of forgiveness and the healing power of the ocean.

Clara Russell

Forty-five-year-old Clara Russell swore she’d never return to her beach town roots and troubled past but when she’s betrayed by her husband one too many times she retreats to her father’s deserted studio sitting on a neglected corner of the sprawling estate of her eighty-year-old estranged mother. Reunited with the water, she hopes to outrun her heartbreak and find the solace she needs to heal as the mystery of her father’s death unravels.

Hidden behind an overgrown walled garden, like so many during the pandemic, Clara learns just how difficult mere survival is, especially so in the middle of an economically ruined dead-end neighborhood in Santa Cruz with characters living in abandoned cars lining the Avenue of more boarded-up houses than lived-in.

Everything changes when a mysterious surfer shows up intent on meddling in her life.

Marty Hall

Meanwhile fifty-year-old Martin Hall, a battle-haunted veteran with a devastating secret of his own, is determined to discharge the duty handed him by Clara’s father, Buck—keep Clara safe and protect Buck’s secret. When he accepted the assignment, Marty took an oath never to become emotionally involved with Clara. The last thing he wants is to fall in love with her.

The Monterey Bay

The heart of Where Dreams Live rests in the expanse of the Monterey Bay where Clara’s father took her surfing as kid. Clara’s return to the waves and her restoration of the seemingly dead expanse shut away for nearly three decades that separates the studio from Clara’s mother’s house set off long repressed memories until secrets from the past become inescapable.

Between the watery realm of the bay and the earth that grounds, supports, and gives life, both Clara and Marty, in their own ways, brave the barriers of each to fix and forgive the past. But, when an emotional tsunami hits, can they hold onto the new life each of them has worked so hard to create?