The Dream Café a popular neighborhood restaurant is a welcoming haven for all kinds of people. The owner feels that the café’s exceptional nighttime goings-on should be preserved so he asks Tom Gibbs a young writer to be its official scribe. Spanning the calendar year before the United States’ involvement in World War II the novel is comprised of a series of chronological stories—narrated by Tom Gibbs—each describing events at the café on a single night.

John Mahoney himself a young man during the time period evoked brings vitality and veracity to the novel’s mood and content. Anyone wishing to relive—or discover—the pre-WWII era will enjoy reading Nights at the Dream Café.

A member of the “Greatest Generation ” John Mahoney was born in 1917 the year that the United States entered World War I. His childhood took place during the "Roaring Twenties " and his adolescence coincided with the Great Depression. While growing up he became an amateur photographer an avid reader and a lover of music and nature. Just before the U.S. entered World War II he was drafted into the U.S. Army. After field artillery training on the West Coast he was stationed in Queensland Australia where he found a home-away-from-home. From 1942 to 1945 John served in two campaigns one on Biak Island in New Guinea and one on the Zamboanga Peninsula of Mindanao Island in the Philippines.

Upon his return from the service the G.I. bill permitted John to enroll at the Catholic University of America where he met his wife-to-be graduate nurse Attracta O'Connor whom he married in 1949. The two were married for fifty years until Attracta’s death in 1999. They had three daughters whom John supported by working as an editor and writer. John lives in Illinois and has three grandchildren. He is a long-time member of the Downers Grove Writers' Workshop and the Illinois State Poetry Society. He has published numerous articles stories and reviews as well as a chapbook of poetry Lost Garden.

 

“With Nights at the Dream Cafe Baby-Boomers and younger readers are introduced to a world they have never known. Mahoney paints a vivid heart-warming portrait of a place almost ethereal in nature and transports us back to a calmer more communal time in America.” — David Sutor Writer/Publisher

“Nights at the Dream Café is the loveliest—and most lovingly written—book I have ever read. It is a celebration of human riches: kindness humility forgiveness and optimism.”— Michael Burke ChicagoWriter ww.ChicagoWriter.blogspot.com