BOOK FEATURE (FICTION): GABRIEL'S STORY

You find this book on our shelves and in eBook format. If you don’t have a device, we can load it on an iPod Touch for you. The cover of this book as you can see features what appears to be a man in his late twenties or early thirties standing in an open, wide field. To some of you that may seem old. So for you this book jacket is not bright and hip. But the saying, “you can’t judge a book by it’s cover” certainly applies to this novel. You see, the main character is a much younger 15 year-old guy who is traveling with his kid brother and mother from Maryland to Kansas. They become homesteaders as their widowed mother starts a new marriage with someone she once knew as a slave. Like many teens dealing with the remarriage of a parent, Gabriel is resentful of the man who has taken his father’s place. He can’t stand the new home, he can’t believe he no longer has a grasp of the easier middle class, college-destined life his father had set before him. His life now is pure drudgery. He life is so stifling he can’t see getting past from one day to the next day. He does however have a friend named James who offers him a shot of escape and adventure.

Adventure is not really adventure but boundless danger. It’s a danger that just gets bigger, wider and horrendous at every turn. Two naive boys in the late 1800s run away from home. They run smack into what they think is just horse thievery. To these two teen that’s kind of mysterious and cool. But they actually become are unwilling participants and guilty-by-association to cold-blooded murder and rape. They must again run away. They’d like to run back to the life they ran away from in the first placee. Gabriel would like to run head long into redemption.

This is a great historical novel as shows a slice of the American Westward Expansion. Ask Ms. Stewart for help if you can’t find it on the shelves.