Keeping the Dream Alive examines a crucial era in the evolution of the CCF/NDP in Ontario when, after almost a decade of unprecedented popularity, the party experienced a significant decline in support. Dan Azoulay chronicles the party's difficult but inspiring struggle to survive and regain its status as a major player in the political arena.

Azoulay delineates the central themes and determining factors of the party's development during the 1950s and early 1960s. The CCF/NDP had to contend with not only a booming postwar economy and a very popular premier but also a Cold War-induced phobia toward the Left and serious intraparty divisions. Despite this the party slowly recovered, led by a core of dedicated activists and employing an array of strategies, including the much-publicized transformation of the CCF into the NDP in the early 1960s.

The author counters allegations that the CCF/NDP opportunistically abandoned its essential qualities (such as its socialist ideology or democratic structure) for the sake of electoral gain and that organized labour played a leading role in the party in these years, contributing to the dilution of the movement. Although the party sought new alliances among the province's less privileged groups, especially organized labour, it did so cautiously and even hesitantly, always conscious of the need to preserve its basic identity.