Like many young girls growing up in the 1950s, author Mildred Santiago-Vlez dreamed of a perfect life with the perfect husband and perfect children.

But reality interrupted those dreams and caused her to face a tragedy she had never imagined. In Dreams and Realities, she narrates her story and the devastating events that marked and changed her life—a life that centers on love, loss, and resiliency.

In this memoir, Mildred tells about her family life in Brooklyn, New York, where she was born, and of living most of her adult life in the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico. Dreams and Realities shares how Mildred did find a perfect husband and thought she had the perfect children. But she soon discovered that her precious Yvonne, Maritza, and Eddie Jr. were afflicted with a rare type of muscle disease that caused them to die in infancy. Her dream was shattered.

A story of joy, dreams, disappointments, pain, and grief, Dreams and Realities describes how these heartbreaking events changed Mildred, and it recounts the choices she made to overcome her adverse circumstances to become a testimony to the power of love and faith.