Ghost Train opens with Remi experiencing the first visit of the loud, ominous train whose bright lamp shines though his bedroom window. The thirteen-year-old is a well-rounded figure, a realistic human being with a complex personality. He and his family have just moved to Oakland from Haiti, his father having landed a job teaching about Haitian culture and the supernatural at the University of California, Berkeley. Much of the novel concerns his adapting to American life, and Mowry uses him to carry most of the novel's complex social commentary. What seems rich to him seems poor to his American classmates—"Even the poorest-dressed boy he'd [Remi] seen would have looked like a hip-hop fashion model among the street children of Port-auPrince."

Remi's partner in Ghost Train is classmate Niya Bedford. She makes for a good partner in the novel not only because of...