DEEP DREAM OF THE RAIN FOREST

In a story straight out of the Kipling/H. Rider Haggard tradition, a British teenager learns that the world is wider than he ever imagined when he's kidnapped and taken deep into the jungles of Borneo. To the tribal Iban, dreams have great significance, and good or evil omens are pervasive; impelled by a vision, young Bayang leaves his village, taking Tambong—an outcast known as ``Duck Foot'' for her deformity—as a guide. When the two encounter Harry Windsor, a 15-year-old orphaned in WW I, they snatch him away, convinced that he can help them achieve the insights their dreams promise. The Iban ``Bejelai,'' or ``Dream Walk,'' becomes a journey of discovery for Harry, too, as his mettle is tested by his captors and by the jungle's dangers (including a party of headhunters); by the end, he has indeed helped both Bayang and Tambong, while they've shown him the narrowness of his racist, White Man's Burden views. Bosse's characters are strong and admirable, his writing precise and evocative; and the jungle—``where time was always now, and the vast ocean of greenery washed over [Harry] like an endless dream''- -is a strong presence holding both terrors and wonders in its depths. As in he did in Ganesh (1981) and in the brutal Captives of Time (1987), this gifted storyteller stirs hearts and minds while teaching readers to value the wisdom of distant cultures. (Fiction. 12-15)