This book is a beautifully written, poetically inspired tale of heroism, love, yes and sex, and the triumph of the human spirit over murderous greed. It's a long road that Behrens makes shorter with many a surprising turn. The Law of Dreams is one great book. I stayed up into the wee hours to finish it. I envy you this journey.

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...a compelling read, notable for its spare, lyrical use of language.

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...enjoy the sprawling, cinematically rendered immigrant story.

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A lengthy yet surprisingly fast-moving story, The Law of Dreams is sure to establish this Canadian writer as a serious literary talent...Behrens' use of crisp dialogue clearly conveys the fear, the longing and the unbridled hope of a young man teetering on the brink between starvation and salvation. But it is in his economical narrative that Behrens truly shines. 'Life honed to the very edge. Sharpened on a whetstone. Chopping through the days. Working time like it was a sweep of hay.'

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The Law of Dreams lowers a tape recorder into the pit of history. All that was lost, everything we've forgotten, is suddenly restored. The research is prodigious, the story is epic, the structure is bold, and the ancient language is something new and wondrous to our ears.

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From a mountaintop in Ireland to the beckoning promise of America, there are scenes that will remain imprinted upon the reader's mind. Peter Behrens is a tremendously talented writer.

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One of the many fine things about Peter Behrens' stunningly lyric first novel, The Law of Dreams, is that it is emphatically a story of that great hunger, a work of richly empathetic imagination that reminds us once again of how powerful historical fiction can be in skilled hands. In fact, the story has a factual and emotional authenticity that calls to mind the similarly masterful debut Thomas Flanagan made with his now classic novel of Irish history, The Year of the French.

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...The Law of Dreams rings with a strange, hard poetry, a mingling of Behrens's rich narrative voice and scraps of startling wisdom that seem to emanate directly from Fergus's mind...In the life of this determined young man, Behrens illuminates one of the 19th century's greatest tragedies and the massive migration it launched. A novel that animates the past this vibrantly should make volumes of mere history blush. 'Life burns hot,' Fergus thinks, and so do these pages.

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An emotional epic bearing echoes of Melville and Ondaatje, conveying scents and shimmers of a vanished world under the skin of our own.

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...an absorbing, unsparing and beautifully written account of one man's escape from the charnel house that Ireland became.

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Inspired by his own family history, Behrens has fashioned a paean to the strength of the human spirit that illuminates a piece of history. The law of dreams is to keep moving, and that's what Fergus does, taking advantage of opportunities even as he is haunted by dreams and hurt by betrayal. Behrens tells this story in spare prose that distills ideas to their essence, making this absorbing historical fiction.

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...Behrens has fashioned a beautiful idiom for his book, studded with slippery archaisms and mournful, musical refrains...the language and the things it describes seem to be spun out of a single material. And we move through it as willingly, or compulsively, as the protagonist, the wind of love and hate at our backs.

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The Law of Dreams is the best literary adventure novel I've read since Lonesome Dove, a brilliant heart-felt celebration of the capacity of the human spirit.

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An action-driven tale stuffed with fascinating historical research.

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...there is much in The Law of Dreams...to excite admiration.