Dreamer: A Novel

"With Dreamer, his first novel since the 1990 National Book Award-winning Middle Passage, Charles Johnson offers the first work of fiction to explore the extraordinary life of Martin Luther King Jr. Providing keen insight into the last two years of King's life while questioning the entire legacy of equality, Dreamer extends beyond the definition of historical fiction with its imaginative range and singular ambition.

""I wanted to start a dialogue,"" Johnson says of Dreamer, ""a dialogue about what we, as a people, learned about civil rights, human rights in the wake of the life of this man."" Johnson's personal vision of Reverend King is that of a philosopher, an intellectually complex man, often conflicted, who seemed to understand he was at the center of a historical journey.

Dreamer is narrated from the perspective of Matthew Bishop, one of King's devoted followers. The novel begins in Chicago at the height of the turbulent civil rights movement. Matthew introduces King to Chaym Smith, a man whose striking physical resemblance to King wins him the job of official stand-in. In the course of training Chaym to shield King from danger, Matthewcomesto realize the philosophical magnitude of the greatest civil rights leader, and the ambiguities within the movement itself, and he