Dream Ghost is a wonderful historical fiction novel. The setting is July 1853 in Cahaba, Alabama, the first permanent Capital of Alabama. Age level is 9+ or basically for fourth and fifth graders. Some younger children enjoy reading it as well as adults. It is a story about twelve year old Daniel Seer who wants to be a private eye like Alan Pinkerton. Daniel from Mobile is visiting his friends in Cahaba for the summer and has a dream about two men, and a trunk on the same night that the local drugstore is broken into. Sometimes Daniel's dreams come true. He wonders will his dream help him solve this crime. Some folks in Cahaba say a ball of light has stalked them. Did it really happen, or did slave owners make up the story to prevent runaways? Daniel is scared when he learns his father has been asked to work on the Underground Railroad. Mr. Pinkerton works on it in spite of dangers. But Daniel doesn't want his father caught like two "agents" in western Alabama. After the Civil War, Daniel's formerly enslaved friends, Jordan and George Hatcher, become leaders among the freedmen during Reconstruction.