Kid Moses

August 17, 2015
In Thornton’s debut novel, a young Tanzanian boy is torn between the savagery of nature and the equal savagery of mankind. Abandoned on the streets of Dar es Salaam, 11-year-old Moses scratches out a meager existence with his friend, Kioso. On impulse, they jump onto a passing truck and don’t jump off until they are far away from the city. Not knowing how to survive in the wilderness, they try to make their way back home. They get separated, but later are happily reunited at a school in Dar es Salaam. Moses, increasingly restless, refuses to be constrained by four walls and once again heads for the wilderness, accompanied, as before, by Kioso. This time, tragedy strikes and Moses finds himself on his own until he is rescued by a hunter named Boyd and Toroye, his nomadic guide. At this point, Moses witnesses a cold-blooded act that makes him long to be back home. Although the novel is short, it includes a long list of terrible things that happen to Moses, who exhibits the combination of resourcefulness and tenacity necessary to survive in such a harsh environment. Thornton excels in showing a harrowing adult world through the eyes of a child who has been forced to grow up early. In the end, this is the rare work of fiction about childhood that refuses to admit any sentimentality into the narrative.

Starred review from November 1, 2015

An American-born wilderness guide in Tanzania, Thornton clarifies the harshness of life in Africa through the story of a boy named Moses. Abandoned by his mother to a cruel uncle after his father's death, Moses runs away and hangs about the harbor of Dar es Salaam. Then he and friend Kioso impulsively leap on a truck that takes them far from the city and are separated, with Moses hunting guiltily for Kioso and committing an act of violence in defense of another friend. VERDICT Though Moses is embraced by moments of kindness, his is a rough, tough life forthrightly told. And it's told without stooping to graphic excess, which means you trust it implicitly. Highly recommended for all fiction readers.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 15, 2015
With the excitement of the archetypal perilous adventure, Thornton's stark, beautiful prose will hold readers in this story of a young boy's struggle to survive in Tanzania today. A street orphan in Dar es Salaam, nine-year-old Moses dreams of returning to the farm where his now-vanished family once lived and building a house, and it's that notion that prompts him to take off with his friend Kioso. The pair wander through the bush, sleeping in ditches and under trees, escaping abuse, finding shelter with kind strangers; then Kioso dies after being bitten by a snake, and Moses is alone. The grinding detail grabs you: what Moses finds to eat (eggs are like gold, safe and rich); the horror of seeing poachers kill an elephant. The action is fast, and the haunting search for home never stops. When he finds work with the kindly Mama Tisha, and she hugs him, he thinks of his mother and feels again the heartbreak of being abandoned by her. He has never been in school, so there is hope at last when he gets taken in at a boarding school, but he cannot settle in a place so quiet and must break out. That unflinching realism, surprising yet obvious, is the core of the story, but it's the crisply evoked small moments in this tale of a homeless kid on the run that give the novel its remarkable power.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)