Orson Scott Card, Magic Street

Magic Street

Orson Scott Card

Del Rey, July 2005, $24.95, 400 pp.

ISBN 0345416899

One day while driving home Dr. Byron Williams acts totally out of character by picking up a homeless person he dubs the Bag Man. This creature tells him his wife is pregnant and when they arrive home, he finds his spouse who wasn't pregnant giving birth to a baby boy. The Bag Man puts the baby in a paper bag and orders them to forget what happened which they do. A few hours later Cecil "Ceese" Tucker finds a baby in a bag by the drainpipe.

The child called Mack Street is taken in by Una Lee Smitcher who with Ceese raises him will love and the whole neighborhood of Baldwin Hills, an affluent black community, takes him into their hearts. Mack has odd dreams and has the ability to see another person's deepest desires. For years he does his best to suppress the dreams or cut them off before something bad happens. However, he finally learns who and what he is and who he will have to fight if he doesn't want true evil, the opposite side of himself to be let loose on an unsuspecting world.

This is Orson Scott Card's first contemporary urban fantasy and he demonstrates his considerable talent with a work that is sure to win him an award nomination. Readers see Mack mature from a baby to an adult who begins to understand he is the essence of all the things good and bad. It is impossible not to care about him and we root for him on when it is time to face his real enemy, himself. MAGIC STREET is a spellbinding tale that engages the audience.

Harriet Klausner