DREAMS OF ARCADIA is the story of Nate Holub, a Houston veterinarian with two teenage daughters. When Nate is offered a job in his late father’s hometown, he accepts, but he wonders if a city boy has what it takes to be a country vet. Nate quickly discovers the gritty reality of rural vet practice. He gets trampled by a cow, tangles with an irate cat in the cab of a pickup, and delivers a calf while standing knee-deep in creek water. As he struggles to adjust, he reconnects with his family and learns that his father’s death thirty years earlier was much more complicated than he realized. His father was not alone when he had a car accident—he was with Clarissa, his brother’s wife. Nate probes the circumstances surrounding the accident, afraid of what he might find. He encounters a resentful cousin, a wary town patriarch, a reclusive uncle and his long-sequestered daughter, a beguiling hidden garden, and a mysterious illness. He is drawn to the Holub family farm, where he seeks refuge in nature and tries desperately to reach Viola, his inscrutable grandmother. The farm is a place that haunts his memory, a place where dark family secrets dwell. Dreams of Arcadia explores the enduring ties that hold a family together and bind a family to the land. It is a plot-driven mystery story, but it could also be viewed as an allegory for our ultimate reliance on the natural world, for the healing power of nature. The setting is a culturally distinct region of Texas settled by Czech and German immigrants, not the Texas of popular imagination.