Dream City - Hardcover

In Depression-era Chicago, six-year-old Michael Halligan longs to be a hero. Consumed by the 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 unexpectedly in 1934. Michael is left in the custody of his gangster father, Paddy, and he begins to lose his faith in the power of good over evil.
As an adult, Michael combs the streets of Chicago and its suburbs, looking to recover the purity and comfort that defined his boyhood. While he attempts to track down a copy of every Big Little Book in existence, Michael, perhaps unintentionally, also starts to seek out unconditional love, security, and stability in an arbitrary and unkind world.