That''s when it hits me. I''m staring at a war zone. In South Central.
On an April night in 1992, Payasa learns that her older brother has been stabbed to death, his body left out in the road to rot. He was never involved. He was innocent. He didn''t even carry a gun. And that messes with the rules, even for Lynwood, even for the streets.
But it''s the first day of the LA riots, and the city is tearing itself apart. Fire-fighters, graffiti artists, nurses and law enforcement – all of them connected by this murder – find themselves caught in the mayhem. Every cop is distracted, and for the people who see the law as an enemy, it''s a chance to settle old scores.
That''s just too good an opportunity to miss.
''All Involved is a symphonic, pitch-perfect, superlative novel. It swallowed me whole.'' – David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas
''A heart-breaking portrait of a city tearing itself apart. Ryan Gattis has created characters who live on in the imagination long after you have read the final page.'' - Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train
A propulsive and ambitious novel as electrifying as The Wire, from a writer hailed as the West Coast’s Richard Price—a mesmerizing epic of crime and opportunity, race, revenge, and loyalty
At 3:15 p.m. on April 29, 1992, a jury acquitted three white Los Angeles Police Department officers charged with using excessive force to subdue a black man named Rodney King, and the city exploded in violence. Fifty-three lives were lost. But there were even more deaths unaccounted for: murders that occurred outside active rioting sites, including some committed by those who used the chaos to viciously settle old scores.
A gritty and cinematic work of fiction, All Involved vividly re-creates this turbulent and terrifying time through seventeen interconnected first-person narratives. Focusing on a sliver of Los Angeles almost completely ignored by the media during the riots, Ryan Gattis paints a portrait of modern America itself—laying bare our history, our prejudices, and our complexities. Resonant with the voices of gang members, firefighters, graffiti kids, and nurses caught up in these extraordinary circumstances, All Involved is a literary tour de force.
“A symphonic, pitch-perfect, superlative novel....It swallowed me whole.”—David Mitchell, author of Cloud Atlas
“A heartbreaking portrait of a city tearing itself apart.”—Paula Hawkins, author of The Girl on the Train
“Corrosive, timely, vividly realized scenes of urban warfare and thwarted dreams by a writer who clearly knows his subject.”—Joyce Carol Oates
“A monumental achievement.” —Dennis Lehane
