Events › Author Talk: Stephanie Schorow - Cat Dreaming

A wickedly funny romp into the 1980s. Four women, seven cats, countless lovers. What could go wrong?

Award-winning journalist and popular Boston nonfiction author Stephanie Schorow has written her first novel, a tale of female and feline relationships set in a 1980s media world on the cusp of a digital upheaval.

Cat Dreaming: A Story of Friendships and Second Chances follows the fortunes and burgeoning friendship of four newspaper women as they navigate love, work and curious new inventions like the personal computer.

The tale begins with a mystery. Sarah, a talented but troubled editor, lies comatose after a puzzling car accident. Her friends, Maureen, Tina, and Elektra attempt to smuggle Sarah’s cat into the hospital in a last-ditch effort to rouse her from what they call “cat dreaming,” a state between consciousness and sleep in which everything is as it should be.

The narrative spans the decade, set against a backdrop of ‘80s events and icons, ranging from Madonna hits, to Reaganomics, to AIDS, to Dallas and Dynasty. Tina breaks into journalism with her fake news skills. Sarah falls hard for a charismatic but distant lover. Maureen’s sure-fire promotion to Sunday editor vanishes like second-hand smoke. Elektra finds herself attracted to a woman after a mx-up in personal ads.

Inspired by Schorow’s relationship with her own cats and experiences at the Stamford (Conn.) Advocate, the Associated Press, and the Boston Herald in the 1980s and 1990s, Cat Dreaming paints an indelible portrait of four remarkable women and a news business now gone forever. Some of the events are based on Schorow’s actual writing assignments from the 1980s, such as covering Erica Jong at a book signing and interviewing her idol, Man from U.N.C.L.E. star David McCallum.

Stephanie Schorow is a journalist, writing instructor and the author or coauthor of nine books on Boston history. She has worked as an editor and reporter for the Boston Herald and the Associated Press, as well as newspapers in Connecticut, Idaho, and Utah.

Nonfiction by Schorow, includes: The Cocoanut Grove Nightclub Fire; The Combat Zone: The Stripped Down Story of Boston's Most Notorious Neighborhood; The Great Boston Fire: The Inferno that Nearly Incinerated the City; and East of Boston: Notes from the Harbor Islands. See www.stephanieschorow.com for more information.