A mysterious stranger is hanging around David Curry’s Harlem playground. Moses Littlejohn is an African-American man with white hair, a stubbly beard, baggy clothes, and a faraway look in his eyes that makes him look like the picture of the Ancient Mariner in David’s school textbook. Moses says he’s 303 years old and has been carrying dreams for hundreds of years, now looking for someone to pass them onto. David is not so sure about this, but he does feel there is something about this old man and his dreams that helps him make sense of his own life with a violent father who seems crazy, an older brother flirting with street life, and a mother trying to hold her family together. This quiet, subtle story works on a number of layers with several themes—dreams, visions, home, community, and manhood. Moses’s dreams offer no easy solutions to David’s problems, but they become part of him, add to his knowledge, strength, and understanding, and nudge him toward a renewed relationship with his father and an appreciation of the danger and the magic of Harlem. (Fiction. 10+)
