Oatmeal bread

This looks close to the recipe I use every week to great effect (from Jeffrey Hamelman's book "Bread"). That recipe calls for milk in addition to the water, but the procedure and ingredients are the same. And it works fine to only use water in the same quantity as milk+water. Are you by chance missing milk? I measure everything by weight so I can't speak to the accuracy of the volume measures in your recipe other than they are within range. Any chance you forgot to add something or shorted an ingredient as called for in the recipe? Do you have a new type of whole wheat flour? It can absorb a substantial amount of liquid and lead to a dry dough. I've definitely done that and had to figure it out on the fly. If the dough seems dry, use your judgement and knead in more liquid/water until it feels right. When using volume measurements, this is particularly important as the variability in the amount of flour you get in your cup can be pretty wild--it's a reason to switch to weighing. Also, I always taste the dough to make sure I remembered salt. If forgotten, mix the salt with a little water and knead it in. Bake on!

Look up similar oatmeal bread recipes for ingredients and proportions.
I suspect it's missing liquid and/or fat.

I always feel like family recipes are tricky! I'm guessing you dont want to call or text your mother in law to ask her how it should look? But if you try it again maybe you could just add a bit more water or you can bake it off as is and see how it goes (and then you'll know for next time)

Good luck!

Gosh , thanks for all the helpful suggestions

the recipe is add 1 cup of boiling water to 1/2 cup oatmeal and let cool
1 pkg yeast added to 1/4 cup warm water
1 tablespoon salt, 1 tablespoon butter, melted,
1/4 cup honey
1 3/4 cup white flour
1 cup wheat flour
I mixed this all up as directed but it's very very dry, can't imagine it would bake up well