The Shape of Dreams

A trio of women bond in friendship as a neighborhood tries to seek justice from a system that has forgotten them.

"The Shape of Dreams is a powerful prayer, a novel that indicts the injustice for which there is no quick solution. . . . [It is] a song of furor and tenderness that will leave its mark." --Walter Mosley, bestselling author of the Easy Rawlins series

It's the mid-eighties in East Harlem: a twelve-year-old black boy's murdered body is found by Mathilda "Twin" Johnson, an unlikely hero who is both the neighborhood's troublemaker and its conscience. When she breaks a cardinal rule--"don't call the cops"--her decision ensnares a community and brings unmanageable grief to a mother. Anita, a postal worker and army widow, is determined to solve her son's Tyrone's murder, and her quest galvanizes the neighborhood, which is itself a complex character in this teeming novel, with its Mets fans and gossips, immigrant shop owners and latch-key kids. The local dreamers include a charismatic man of the cloth, a teenage girl with a Whitney Houston voice and no prospects, and Anita's opinionated friend Wanda, whose truant son the police harass and arrest on a regular basis.

Everyone is struggling. Anita, Wanda and Twin, the triad of this vibrant novel, are drawn into the neighborhood drug trap, while a singer, a preacher, and the church ladies who follow him believe their dreams can shape a city.

Will the three be able to break away from crack's dangerous allure? Will the reverend's pressure on the authorities to find Tyrone's killer yield answers? Will justice come to East Harlem?

In the end, during the New York Mets' banner summer of 1986, this community will come together to mourn, fight for a better life, and shape their dreams as best they can.

Author: April Reynolds
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: 02/03/2026
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.20w x 1.40d
ISBN: 9780593316863


Review Citation(s):
Booklist 01/01/2026
Kirkus Reviews 12/01/2025
Publishers Weekly 12/08/2025

About the Author
APRIL REYNOLDS is the author of the novel Knee-Deep in Wonder, which won the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Award and the PEN American Center: Beyond Margins Award. She co-wrote The Red Rooster Cookbook with Marcus Samuelson and is co-editor, with Henry Louis Gates Jr., of The Toni Morrison Reader and The Zora Neale Hurston Reader. Reynolds has taught creative writing at New York University and the 92nd Street Y, and currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. A former resident of East Harlem, she now lives in Astoria, Queens.