Running Dreams
For a world recovering from a paralyzing pandemic, this book reminds us of the power of hope, determination, courage, and the value of supportive friendships.
Running Dreams is a memoir of a man raised in a humble, hard-working family, outside Lima, Peru, at a time of great national political, economic, and social instability. Readers glimpse into the author’s formative years to discover the values and life lessons impressed on him by his family. In an instant, a grenade explosion severs his right hand and blinds him. With scant prospects, he leaves his family and true love to immigrate to the United States, facing a future alone. Beating the odds, he acquires the blindness skills, new culture, and new language necessary to pursue a college education, find a meaningful career, and build a purposeful life.
We join Carlos in a treacherous, exhilarating journey to the United States, where he experiences continuous setbacks, but unexpected open hearts and hands restore him. He single-handedly battles hunger, poverty, homelessness, loneliness, prejudice, betrayal, language barriers, and immigration pitfalls.
In Running Dreams we experience the creation of an exceptional life of purpose and meaning. Those who cherish happy endings will not be disappointed.
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Reviews
Running Dreams by Carlos Serván is a story about determination and following your goals. The author details his life with the Peruvian army and the important choices he makes to dedicate his life to an important role, with physical and mental fitness preparation and a focused mindset. He realizes his dreams when he enters his first year as a cadet at the School of Officers for the Peruvian Investigation Police, entering his first patrol, which changes his life.
This book begins with the author’s childhood, where his dreams center around protecting his country, which would eventually become realized and change the direction of his life in unexpected and sometimes dangerous ways. I appreciated the amount of effort spent on detailing childhood memories, which creates a clear picture of Serván’s personality, family relations, Peruvian background, and ambition.
I found the book to be deeply moving and impactful, as the author details not only his rise to success within his early adulthood but the challenges he faces and his ability to cope. There is sincere openness throughout the book, which gives readers a sense of Serván’s personality and impressive resilience as a hero. This stirring memoir gives readers a sense of inspiration and understanding about the author and his incredible journey.
Running Dreams is a beautifully written story about strength and determination. Carlos Serván has written a fantastic memoir that instills hope and faith in readers through an incredible story that will keep you engaged from the very start.
Serván makes his debut with this affecting memoir of overcoming physical disability and finding success in a foreign land. At a time when Peru was going through a great national political, economic, and social instability, the author was discovering the values and life lessons impressed on him by his family that would become the backbone of his struggle to succeed as a blind man later in America. Even as a young child, Serván wanted to do something for his country, unaware his dream would change the course of his whole life. After four years as a cadet at the new National Detective Academy, a grenade explosion severed his right hand and blinded him. With barely any prospect in sight, Serván left his family and love behind and immigrated to the United States. Determined to succeed, he acquired the blindness skills, learned English, found a sponsor, setting out to pursue college education and a meaningful career. The narrative is leisured, but never maudlin or overly sympathetic as the author shows how his acute determination and will helped him cope with hunger, poverty, loneliness, prejudice, and immigration pitfalls in a foreign land. The book beautifully shows how Serván transformed his physical limitations into an outward source of strength to build a purposeful life. Heartfelt and poignant, the book makes for a beautiful portrait of one man’s journey to success.
Midwest Book Review
If you were disabled and blinded by a bomb, would you then immigrate to a safer yet unknown land? Running Dreams presents this situation when Peruvian cadet Carlos finds his initial dreams and life exploded by a bomb’s aftermath, destroying not only his abilities, but his ideals of family, place, and safety.
In search of the latter (and peace) Carlos moves from military life at the Peruvian academy to the unknown in the United States; there to experience a different form of explosive change and challenge that further tests and revises his convictions and his place in the world.
From his initial vision of working for the antiterrorist unit and identifying the forces of the dangerous Shining Path terrorist organization to the realization that his passion for running has led him to run from his own home and vision of life, Carlos R. Serván creates a powerful memoir of this world that draws readers into the atmosphere of Peru and the move between that nation and an alien world.
After he is injured, Carlos counts down the hours until he can visit the U.S., there to be more effectively treated by doctors who can offer him better alternatives for his life. What he finds is much more than medical relief, but a renewed sense of life purpose despite moving away from everyone he knows and loves and into an environment not only tempered by blindness, but replete with prejudice and additional trials.
There are many memoirs of immigrant experiences on library shelves, but what sets Running Dreams apart from many is its focus on healing and coming to terms with a very different life:
“As I thought about the immigration process and my need for a sponsor, my brain worked overtime. And those were not my only worries. When my training ended, I would have nowhere to live, and I’d be unemployed. Add to that my inadequate language skills and my aching homesickness. Still, I didn’t complain. I had not come to the United States assuming that everything would just fall into place. I knew it would be tough going. I thought to myself, Well, here I am. And, sure enough, it is just as tough as I imagined it would be.”
Whether Carlos is tackling his new blindness, paperwork, social and legal obstacles, or the price of success, readers walk easily in his shoes and experience, with him, the ups and downs of his life:
“I thought of my mother who suffered—maybe more than I did—when I lost my eyesight. I thought of my humble roots in Peru, my poor neighborhood, the jobs I had as a teenager, and getting into the police academy. I thought about the struggles I faced when I arrived in the United States and all my sleepless nights studying.”
The process by which he gains a new, different vision of opportunity and how to grasp it will involve not just readers who are immigrants or disabled, but anyone who has faced a total challenge to their dreams and familiar life, requiring a sea change of revision to perceptions and psyches.
Libraries looking for a memoir that stands out for its dual exploration of disability and achievement as well as immigrant experience will find Running Dreams a winner not just for patrons, but for book clubs looking for standout reading about immigrant dreams and realities.
