Inspired by real events, Roxanne Bocyck’s debut novel Catherine’s Dream is a testament to the power and possibility of nurturing one’s dreams against all odds and overcoming fear and doubt with faith and determination.  

Catherine Soból is a Polish peasant woman in the early 1900s, who lives on an orchard outside of Kraków, Poland, and dreams of being an artist. Raised by an iron fist, Catherine is an old-world girl with new world aspirations. But how will she pursue her dreams of artistry when she must conceal her drawings from her father, a pragmatic peasant-farmer, who demands she work to support the family? In fact, much to Catherine’s dismay, he plans to marry her to a local village boy and settle into a life of security on the small apple orchard that is her dowry.

Over and above her personal turmoil, the Great War has ended but the fighting over Poland’s border with Ukraine continues. Tension rises in Catherine’s family when she falls in love with Józef, a young, local blacksmith who creates beautiful jewelry and encourages her to follow her heart despite her family’s resistance to her artistic dreams. But the plans others force upon her, along with Józef’s disappearance - and probable death - on the war front, send her life skidding in a direction she must now tolerate but is unable live wholeheartedly.

Sold as a “bride” to a crude lout of a man and shipped off to a mountain town in backwoods America, Catherine faces the cold winds of bad chance and other forces that seek to control her destiny, and learns that knowing what she wants, taking risks, and having faith are the keys to unlocking any obstacle that stands in the way of her living the life of her dreams.