Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. (Sacred Smokes; Sacred City) offers a love letter to the city of Chicago via a single-day odyssey in The El, an expansive novel featuring young gang members on a circular journey through an urban landscape. With strong imagery, dreamlike sequences, and gritty considerations of family, love, spicy potato chips, and gun violence, this unusual story will capture and hold the imagination.
On an August day in 1979, teenaged Teddy wakes up early, eats a few buttered tortillas, and gets ready for a momentous event. He will lead 18 fellow members of the Simon City Royals across town via Chicago's elevated train (the El) to a meeting with another "set" of the gang and many others, where a new alliance formed in prison would be applied on the outside. The new Nation will include old enemies, but Teddy is a team player. It is a day of high stakes, and while they all share trepidations, not everyone shares Teddy's hopeful outlook. Teddy's Native identity matters because race is a question for the new Nation, spoken of but not exactly on the official agenda.
The El is utterly intriguing at every turn, shifting pace from high-drama action scenes to contemplative ones. Van Alst portrays a strong sense of both time and place as his characters grapple with race, class, and culture. He gives us tragedy as well as beauty, and a sharp, loving portrait of a very particular big city, with Teddy "riding all the way back toward the neighborhood, window wide open, warm wind howling in, and me in love with everything we could ever be." --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia