Set against the tensions of Civil Rights era America, Dreamer is a remarkable fictional excursion into the last two years of Martin Luther King Jr.'s life, when the political and personal pressures on this country's most preeminent moral leader were the greatest. While in Chicago for his first northern campaign against poverty and inequality, King encounters Chaym Smith, whose startling physical resemblance to King wins him the job of official stand-in. Matthew Bishop, a civil rights worker and loyal follower of King, is given the task of training the smart and deeply cynical Smith for the job. In doing so, Bishop must face the issue of what makes one man great while another man can only stand in for greatness. Provocative, heartfelt, and masterfully rendered, Charles Johnson confirms yet again that he is one of the great treasures of modern American literature.
"With compelling profundity and power Johnson takes us to a time, one within living memory, when a 'dreamer' among us saw love as our redemptive principle and strongest weapon before he 'died for our collective racial sins.'"
Andy Solomon, The Boston Globe
"It's a joy to read fiction in which there is a cultivated vision at work...the greatest victory of Dreamer is the light it shines on the life of Martin Luther King Jr."
Dennis McFarland, The New York Times Book Review
"With his novelist's instinct, [Johnson] grips us immediately with a stunning doppelgänger theme."
