The Plot Grandma Spun in Three Dreams

Vanessa West wakes from a dream in which her late grandmother, Julia Simmon, warns of a locust plague and urges the family to sell their wheat and raise fish instead. In her first life, Vanessa obeyed, and the advice led to ruin: drought killed the fish, a crate dug from beneath the oak tree held heroin instead of gold, her father Alan West was arrested, her mother Hannah Smith fell gravely ill, and Dr. Hank Vance was diverted from saving her boyfriend James Larson. Blamed for James's death, Vanessa was stabbed and died seeing her grandmother grin.

Now she has returned to the day of the dream, determined never to trust it again. She buys pesticide and tends the wheat herself, and the crop ripens to the highest offer the grain merchants have ever made. Yet on the eve of harvest, locusts descend in black clouds and devour nearly everything.

As her father's hopes collapse and he walks out to borrow money from relatives, Vanessa is left to wonder why the plague came when she refused to listen.