Gabriel's Story

When Gabriel Lynch moves with his mother and brother from a brownstone in Baltimore to a dirt-floor hovel on a homestead in Kansas he is not pleased. He does not dislike his new stepfather a former slave but he has no desire to submit to a life of drudgery and toil on the untamed prairie. So he joins up with a motley crew headed for Texas only to be sucked into an ever-westward wandering replete with a mindless violence he can neither abet nor avoida terrifying trek he penitently fears may never allow for a safe return. David Anthony Durham is a genuine talent bent on devastating originalityandGabriels Story is as formidable a debut as we have witnessed.