Dream House

Dream House is a mystery novel by Valerie Laken. Set in Ann Arbor, Michigan, it concerns a married couple named Kate and Stuart Kinzler who buy a dilapidated historic house and try to repair both the house and their marriage. In the process, they learn that the house was the site of a murder many years before. As they discover more about the home’s history and deal with the arrival of the accused murderer, who lived there as a child, their marital problems quickly escalate. Alternating between the perspectives of the Kinzlers and the convicted man, the novel meditates on the starkly different values and emotions people imbue on their homes and relationships, and how these patterns are tied to and complicated by the force of memory.

The novel begins on a night in Ann Arbor in summer 1987. The house has just been the site of a fatal shooting; at least one victim is confirmed dead, and a man named Walker Price has been accused of the crime. The oldest son of a black family that lived in the house, he is quickly declared the primary suspect and thrown in jail after an overly expedient trial.

The novel shifts forward to a day eighteen years later, 2005. Kate Kinzler lives in a derelict apartment in Ann Arbor with her husband, Stuart, and ponders whether she made the right choice to spend her life with him. She recalls that when they met, he seemed a refreshing contrast to the strict, affluent parents and extended family which raised her. Now, she is 29 and bored of living with such an ambitionless person in what looks like college dorm. Stuart is aware of her growing resentment and tries to placate her, giving in when Kate’s father gives them a large amount of money to shop for a house. Kate selects a historic house in the suburbs that is in serious need of repair. She suggests that repairing it together will motivate them to restore their relationship, hoping also to earn back the respect of her parents.



Initially tolerant of Kate’s idea, Stuart grows anxious and upset when Kate begins to obsessively restore the house. They discover that their new home was the site of the murder in 1985 and Stuart walks out of their marriage abruptly. In the following chapters, Walker’s perspective is introduced. Alternating with Kate’s, it foreshadows their inevitable meeting and their contrasting conceptions of what the house might become and might serve. Now age 36, Walker has spent half of his life in jail. He arrives at the house to confront bitter memories and and runs into Kate, striking up a peculiar friendship with her. Kate, meanwhile, has no idea that Walker is the convicted murderer. Kate soon realizes that with Stuart gone, the remodeling effort could use another pair of helping hands, and recruits him to help out.

Around the same time, she recruits a man named Jay who works at the local school. He is artistic and seems laid back, but has an undercurrent of emotional turmoil. He is still reeling from his experiences with a dysfunctional relationship and some trauma from working on the clean up crew after the 1985 murder. With Jay’s help, Kate gradually learns enough context about Walker to research the murder further. She begins to suspect that he was the accused murderer. Realizing she is about to discover his true identity, Walker confesses that he was indeed the convict in 1985, but insists that he did not commit the murder; rather, it was an accidental shooting that precipitated from an argument between him and his mother’s boyfriend, who dealt drugs and was negatively impacting their family life. Walker relates that he wants to repair his relationship to the family he left behind and its values of love, hard work, family, creativity, and the cultivation of the home.

The novel concludes as Kate looks forward to the future, knowing now that the home is impossible to perfect, as every individual has a unique conception of how one might “restore” a home informed so strongly by memory and chance. While her newfound moral agnosticism gives her the will to move on, Walker succeeds also to reconnect with his emotional and family life, seeking the forgiveness of his family through restoring their memory of him and their faith in his innocence. Dream House is thus a reflection now only on how the ghosts of memory haunt each individual, but also about how they can be reckoned with and altered through the power of human will and connection.