MAGIC STREET, by Orson Scott Card, Ballantine Books, 397 pages, $24.95.

The old axiom says writers should write what they know. So it is a bit surprising that Orson Scott Card, former Utah resident and confirmed Caucasian science-fiction author, would tackle "Magic Street," where all the protagonists are black.

Card's signature work is "Ender's Game" and its sequels and retellings, centered on a young boy's struggle in a battle school and a future human war against a deadly alien race. He has also written a series of books based on a family living on an alien planet and their search for Earth.

While each of these, and most of Card's works, deal with societies or cultures that might be considered "foreign," none of them are real. But the neighborhoods and social groups depicted in "Magic Street" can be visited in person today. This presents a whole new challenge to an author who has excelled at making the extraordinary feel so genuine to readers.

Card handles this challenge beautifully, perhaps partly thanks to his background in producing reader-friendly characters in cultures and events that are unfamiliar. Here, he has delivered characters who shine and hold this contemporary fantasy together.

Mack Street is a truly mysterious baby found in a plastic bag covered with ants next to a drain pipe. He is discovered by preteen Ceese Tucker in a middle-class black neighborhood. (While the circumstances are fantastic, the setting is the real Baldwin Hills near Los Angeles.)

The neighborhood becomes familiar and appealing to readers who can easily relate to the two main characters and the neighbors of all ages. With Ceese's help, Mack is taken in by Ura Lee "Miz" Smitcher, a divorced nurse who accepts Mack as the closest thing she will ever have to her own child.

While Mack isn't like other children, he is loving and gentle and good, and, although often unnoticed, widely accepted by the community. Readers follow Mack as he grows up fighting an ability to see the deepest dreams of others. He's trying his best just to be normal, although it is clear that eventually this will become impossible.

The book is compelling and a brisk read, slowing somewhat in the middle while Mack does some maturing and a couple of the other staple characters do some deep thinking. While not boring, occasionally these passages drag slightly, but by the time the ultimate conflict comes into focus the novel is propelling the reader forward like a bullet. The ending is fitting, and not just for Mack Street but for the village that raised him.

In the book's acknowledgements, Card explains that the book was spawned by the desire of a black friend who urged him to write about a black protagonist. It's clear that Card asked for and received help from those inside the culture. In the end, the author has created not only an enjoyable fantasy novel and at least a trio of commendable black heroes that should cross culture and racial boundaries but a tribute to a community that is vastly under-represented in the literary realm.

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E-mail: lc@desnews.com