Unwanted

Nothing in mystery novel, Unwanted written by Kristina Ohlsson about homelessness or mentions of homeless people. There were mentions of street walkers; many U.S.A. homeless do support themselves via prostitution, but that does mean fictional street walkers living in Sweden were homeless.

This is a first for me: the novel appeared in my dream, as if I was watching a movie. Teens were kicking a ball around a field; when a couple of the boys went in search of ball that landed in some bushes, they found a dead baby behind a tree, back against a large rock. Before they saw the baby, they noticed chipped flakes of blue nail polish, and something else lying under a tree.

There was sort of a narration going on; police discussing the body and relevance to case they had been working on. I imagine Ohlsson is an excellent descriptive writer in order for those vivid blue chips of polish to appear so clearly in my dream. Details of the dream have faded, yet I can still picture the field, the bushes, the trees, path or opening leading to the rock.

I think that part of the dream scene is from a park here in Long Beach. Name escapes me for a moment. I used to call it "Mike's park" because daughter's husband lived not far from it and spent many childhood days there. The three of us had gone there together several times; I used to stop at the park to shoot hoops, during breaks in my retail merchandiser job. That is, I serviced nearby stores, went to park for lunch, specifically to use the usually empty basketball court to work on my twin goals ~ improve ability to make foul shots; build up upper body muscle strength.

I believe it was when I was leaving 7th Street apartment that I went to that park, to fence, around some bushes and trees to dump my rock collection. It was symbolic, tho' I no longer recall why. I mourned the loss of those rocks, I collected for years, especially those that I collected from every place I stopped on my first drive across the country. I miss those because I had them mounted with notations as to where I found them. Memory joggers.

During my homeless days I often went to that park to sit, read, try to sleep. I checked the corner by the fence trying to determine if I could find my rocks. Always thought about Mike and Dawn when I was there, visualizing us playing Frisbee, or me, alone, shooting hoops. I have taken walks to the park, since living in this apartment. Again, thinking of the past; especially saying, in my mind, "there's Mary sitting on the bench," and so on.

Unwanted is a creepy thriller that kept me engrossed. Stayed up too late, tired, but wanting to know what happens next. A sentence made no sense to me: "She was white in the face it wasn't true." The sentence before said: "I remember I ran into her later on that day, in the evening." It seems something was missing. Like maybe he asked her how she was doing, and she said "fine".

That due to the next sentences, "Really put the wind up me. But she said she'd be fine if she could go and rest." Perhaps the speaker meant that her reason for taking a day off was not true, because she looked ill. The wording could have to do with the book having been translated to English from Swedish. Still an excellent whodunnit.