Rainmaker

Although fictional, this coming-of-age novel accurately reflects a massive crisis of identity among young men in South Africa's ghettoes. For some of them nothing has changed, and Nelson Mandela's dream of a rainbow nation of opportunity is a bitter joke. Envisioning another kind of life for these kids, this story follows Ky, a young gang member who gets into trouble and is forced to flee his community and the people he knows. Saved from certain death by a stranger who reads his dreams, Ky is invited to go deep into the forbidding mountains and study with Zimry, a Bushman shaman, who becomes a mentor and helps Ky find his calling.

Don Pinnock is a criminologist, a policy analyst, and a senior lecturer at the University of Ibadan in Nigeria. He is a specialist in adolescent deviance and a founder of Usiko, a rehabilitation organization for high-risk youths, and Umzi Wethu, a residential program for AIDS orphans. He is the author of Blue Ice: Travels in Antarctica; Gangs, Rituals and Rites of Passage; Love Letters to Africa; and The Woman Who Lived in a Tree & Other Perfect Stories.