In “The Affliction of Dreams”, Maccagnone writes with ease.  He has a natural storytelling voice that  provides a wonderful volume of stories that mirror life  and it’s unpredictability.  Stories like “Goalie Boy”, “Holy Thursday”, “Customer Three’ and “For the Love of St. Nick” deliver with a simple but substantive writing style.  Mixed in with the compilation of short stories are the authors poetry.  Excellent poems like “Drives with Dad”, “Twentieth Century” and “The Careers of my Mother” sketches life like a Norman Rockwell painting without interrupting the reader’s imagination.  The authors poetry are sandwiched perfectly between his stories allowing the reader to catch a breath before going under again.  In a recent interview the author said, “My writing career started at fourteen, right after I finished reading "The Great Gatsby," in Mrs. Balch's fifth hour class.  Amongst all my friends in class, I was the only boy who actually read the book.  The others simply used Cliff Notes to pass the exam…the characters within the collection (of “The Affliction of Dreams”) suffer from the dreams manifested to them.”