The Extraordinary Dreams of Cynthia Peabody: Book One: Arthur

Recently widowed and facing a future she describes as a dreary blur, Cynthia Peabody cannot sleep. Meditating against the insomnia, she finds a portal in her back garden through which her dreams turn inconveniently real — starting with a dog. The teenager next door offers to walk it, and the friendship that follows does more to shift Cynthia out of her grumpiness than any of the dreaming. Book one of two, and magical realism used to get at complicated grief rather than to avoid it.