Virginia Hamilton is a writer of rare depth and range. Her subjects, her stories, her style, continue to press forward and away from what she has written before. "Dustland" is an exception only because it follows "Justice and Her Brothers" and ought to be read as part of the Justice cycle.

Dustland is a place—or is it simply the future?—to which Justice and her twin brothers and their friend travel in their minds. The four children, each endowed with extrasensory power, can only move as a unit from home and the present to Dustland. Their mutual need is a blessing and a burden—as are all intense relationships, all commitments.

In Dustland, nothing the children have previously known appears applicable to the strange life forms they encounter. The arid, choking, nearly featureless world means nothing if the four children cannot bring to it, along with their...