Six-year-old Michael Halligan longs to be a hero. Submerging himself in the comic book world of Big Little Books, he imagines himself as "Mike Steele," righter of wrongs and friend to Dick Tracy, Buck Rogers, and the Lone Ranger. But reality pops him on the jaw when his mother dies suddenly in the winter of 1934; in the custody of his gangster father Paddy, he begins losing his faith in the power of good over evil. So begins Michael's obsessive quest through the city and suburbs of Chicago to recover the purity and comfort that defined his boyhood.
"Like Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Dream City cuts to the heart of our obsession with the pop cultural artifacts of the past, the solace of old things. It will sneak up on you and break your heart."—Anthony Giardina
