Fantastic read about a controlling husband and a wife who put up with it for yrs.
She finally had enough and left,but not before,raising
both of her children herself.
The daughter had polio and the mother did everything in her power to give her a good life.
This was a memorable read.

The Moments Between Dreams is really two stories about one woman, Carol, whose life didn't turn out as she hoped it would.
She marries Joe, after getting pregnant, which in the 1940s was a big taboo. He is charming and she falls for that charm, not realizing behind that facade lies a an abusing and controlling monster of a man. Joe's real nature comes out of him slowly but surely.
Carol and Joe have 2 children and on a regular day, during a party at their house, their daughter Ellie suddenly can't move her legs anymore. The polio virus has taken hold of the little girl. This is where I began to have a little trouble with the book. I felt the story took a little too long describing the ordeal the family was going through with this illness. Once I got past the first 100 pages, the story really began to pick up. Once Ellie came home and Carol had to deal with both of her children alone, while her husband was drafted, the story really took off for me. Carol's trials and tribulations with an abusive husband and the story of Ellie and her brother growing up in this household, where Joe's treatment of his son was drastically different from that of the treatment of his wife and daughter were very interesting. I rooted for Carol and her children throughout the book.
I would have rated this book 5 stars if not for the slow start.

Judith Brenner’s The Moments Between Dreams was a letdown. I was left feeling meh at the end. The potential for a heart wrenching, hopeful story was there, but ultimately it read more like a “paint-by-number” novel. Taking place in 1940s Chicago, Carol finds herself married young to Joe. His red flags show from their first meeting, but Carol follows what is expected of a young woman and puts her concerns away. While Carol silently endures the violence and emotional abuse from Joes, she makes sure to champion and advocate for their daughter, Ellie. Ellie’s journey as a Polio survivor is the only interesting part of the novel. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to save this book for me. I don’t need explicit descriptions of violence, but the incidences that Joe and Carol go through were so watered down and washed over that there was no real emotional impact. I just was not emotionally invested in Carol. It just…was not engaging. Brenner is an adequate writer, but just did not do it here. I wish I could give more than a 2.75/3 to this novel, but it was a let down for me. Thankful as always for the eARC from NetGalley.

Very well written book that took a little while to read because the story was more intense than what I normally read. This is a story about a mom (Carol) during the 1950s who is married to an abusive man and her struggles with not being able to get free. Her daughter (Ellie) contracts polio at the age of 5 and needs hospitalization and therapy in order to walk again, but lucky lives a fairly normal life. Carol cares for Ellie through her recovery and daily life.

Really well thought out story and plot of a woman who has suffered in silence for far too long and finding a way to be free.

Carol's handsome husband is controlling, jealous and assumes complete control over her ad their budget. To add to their troubles daughter Ellie gets polio. Carol's story begins during WWII, when she is left alone to care for her daughter by herself, getting her daughter to the hospital and therapy with public transportation. When the war is over, she still has to do that because her husband refuses to let her drive. He also begins to beat her. She puts up with it and only gets release when her husband is killed in an automobile accident. I realize that women in the 1950's did not have as many choices as we do, but today we have a hard time feeling sympathy for her.

Beginning in 1943, this is the story of Carol Wozniak, a young Chicago housewife struggling with an abusive husband and a young daughter suffering the aftereffects of polio, while keeping her home and raising her son to be a better man than his father. While the book was easy to read and the topics of abuse and illness were interesting, I felt the writing was very superficial a and I didn't feel like I was engaged with and invested in the characters. In addition, I really questioned a lot of the actions and motivations of Carol and found it distracting that the action frequently did not seem to match the timeline of the chapters. Several times I had to go back to try to understand what was taking place or if I had missed something.

Overall, I think readers of historical fiction will enjoy this book and its subject matter. I would like to thank Greenleaf Book Group and NetGalley for an advance copy.

I thought the author did a good job of describing the difficulties of raising a child diagnosed with polio. While the spousal abuse was I’m sure accurate, it was not pleasant to read, as was the disparity between the way the son and daughter were treated by Joe (again, accurate for the time period and culture). The characters were too flat for me which made it hard to really root for them. I was, however, happy with the ending.

Highly recommend!! My first book to read by this author but definitely not my last!! Uniquely and beautifully written, this story and its characters stay with you long after you finish the book.

This was an interesting book about a difficult and painful topic. The author was skillful in depicting the polio epidemic that struck the US during WWII and I learned so much from this part of the book. Many other topical elements pertaining to the time period contributed strongly to the narrative, including descriptions of Chicago. The domestic abuse was also handled deftly, and although physical domestic abuse is not something I have experienced, I could relate to the emotional abuse described, as I’m sure many others unfortunately can. While the author expressed herself so fluently in addressing issues of family and being a mother, I struggled with much of the dialogue. It struck me as choppy and unrealistic: for example, I couldn’t find a single conversation in the book that included the use of contractions. Seriously, who converses with family and friends here in the US using such formal stilted language? Some of the dialogue attributed to the daughter, Ellie, also came off as incredibly wrong, just not anything at all like how young children talk. The writing rarely reflected the tones of real people talking, and that impeded the narrative for me.

The horrors of domestic violence and spousal abuse are thoroughly examined in this novel, which also addresses the epidemic of polio which was prevalent in the United States in the first half of the 1900s (my father was a victim of polio in 1924).

Carol is a young girl who is swept off her feet by Joe and she quickly become pregnant, so they also quickly get married. They have a boy and a girl and then their little girl contracts polio. Shortly thereafter Joe is recruited into the military and finances are stretched, their daughter is in the hospital for about a year and Joe’s physical abuse of Carol begins. Joe’s violent nature and Carol’s commitment to her faith and family allow the abuses to become life threatening until she gets the courage and assistance from her family to find her way out - after some 20+ years.

I received an advanced copy of this book from NetGalley for my voluntary honest review. This is at times a difficult story to read as it is set in a time when abuses were often ignored or blamed on the victims by the religious leaders and counselors who were approached for help. Things are better today, but domestic abuse still takes lives. The author has done a good job of addressing the issues of abuse and the difficulties associated with polio.

This interesting book is a fast read that will keep the reader engrossed. The main question--will the narrator save herself from an abusive marriage and give her daughter a future—pulls the reader in, and the subplots developed along the way also keep one reading. Will she find another relationship? What will happen with her son? The tension builds as her husband’s abuses accelerate. Will Carol be able to save herself? Read to the end to find out. I recommend this book to anyone interested in women’s independence, escaping abusive relationships, and the history of polio in this country.

Thank you To Green leaf Book Group Press,, net galley, and Judith F. Brenner for giving me an arc copy of the moments between dreams to review. This book was historical fiction and covered so many hard topics of the 1940 era. It covered war, polio, and domestic abuse. The story really flowed very hard to stop reading it kept my interest the whole time. This was my first book by Judith F. Brenner but, it will not be my last.

Set in the 1940s and 50s, this book follows Carol through her daughters polio diagnosis and recovery, and her volatile relationship with her husband. Her husband is abusive and becomes worse after the war. Carol never really knows when he will snap and beat her again. She and her children are constant walking on egg shells. In addition to the physical abuse, her husband also is very controlling of everything she does.

Her little girl is diagnosed with polio and we get to watch her recovery from small child to teenager. We read about the treatments, surgeries and therapies she receives.

I enjoyed the story. It was hard to read at times, as the subject matter was dark. I don't want to spoil anything so I will just say the ending was perfect.

I was given an advance copy of the book by Netgally and the publisher Greenleaf Book Group Press for my honest opinion. This story had me hooked from the beginning. It was a great story with strong relatable characters and it was a fast read. It takes place in a time period that I have not read a lot of books written in this era. It's based on the Polio Epidemic and domestic abuse (trigger alert). It is very well written you can tell that a lot of research went into it. This is a new author to me and I can't wait to read more books written by her. I highly recommend this book.

This book had me hooked from the beginning. Brenner’s writing about the topic of spousal abuse is very compelling.

Set in the 1940’s Carol marries Joe when she gets pregnant. Joe becomes very controlling and abusive. Carol quickly realizes he is not the man of her dreams even though she still loves him.

In the midst of dealing with an abusive husband Carol has to handle caring for her daughter who gets sick with Polio while Joe gets drafted.

From loving Joe, to wanting to leave, to knowing she couldn’t because her children would taken away, to wanting to be a good role model the writing had me feeling every one of Carol’s conflicting emotions and made me understand why she chose to stay as long as she did.

I would definitely recommend this book.

Thank you netgalley for an advance copy of this book for review.

This book focuses on two main topics; Polio and spouse abuse.
Reading this did gave me more insight into the lives of patients and families who found themselves confronted with a family member contracting Polio.
Having read the author's bio I can easily understand why Brenner chose this topic. With first hand knowledge from relatives,she has a perspective most of her readers do not. Great insight into a life altering disease.

As for the topic of abuse, I do applaud Brenner for keeping the subject relevant. While the execution of the bookwas not to my liking, as the charachters lacked depth and the storyline seemed to drag, I do get the sense that the author has a passion for the subject matter.

Thank to NETGALLEY for the ARC.

A strong debut novel that adeptly deals with difficult subjects--polio and domestic abuse. Set during a dozen years or so beginning in 1943, Carol, a young housewife on the south of Chicago is challenged with her five-year-old daughter's polio infection nd painful recovery as well as an increasingly controlling and abusive husband. There are no magical answers, and the strength of the story pulled me through a few awkward passages at the beginning--I finished reading in a day.

A great story also heartbreaking! Thanks Judith Brenner for continuing to shine the light on Domestic Violence as it is still a very important thing that we all need to keep in mind!

I loved the idea of this, but the execution just didn't rise to expectations. There was no depth to the characters, so the ability to connect and truly care about them didn't exist. Often the actions and emotions mentioned lacked authenticity, which had the result of pulling me out of the story to wonder what exactly we were supposed to believe. The story did improve towards the end, but it was a bit too late. I believe the author had a passion for the subject, it just failed to realise in print.

My thanks to Greenleaf Book Group Press, the author, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This story hooked me right from the beginning, which is always a plus. The prose was extremely readable and the plot was realistic and compelling.

In the 1940s, Carol marries Joe, and they seem so in love. Through the years though, Joe becomes more and more controlling, jealous, narcissistic and violent. Carol and her daughter and son, Ellie and Tom all perceive Joe's violence and abuse in their own ways, in a day and age when women were subservient to men, and spousal abuse was ignored and downplayed.

Carol seeks out ways to find relief from Joe's control and abuse. One of the ways she finds is to befriend Sam, a reporter from a Chicago newspaper, who has covered the polio outbreak that victimized Carol's daughter, Ellie. Through many years, Sam's devotion to Carol never wavers.

If I had one issue with this book, it was that the author used terms like "networking", along with others, that weren't used in the 1940s and 1950s. As with all historical fiction, it is more authentic if terminology matches that which was used in the time frame of the story.

This one issue doesn't really take away from the story, though. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and am looking forward to this author's future work.