All Involved

Ryan Gattis

21 May 2015
9781509808786
702 pages

Synopsis

For six days, Los Angeles is a city ablaze.
For six days, seventeen people are caught in the chaos.
For six days, Los Angeles shows the world what happens when laws are no longer enforceable.
Ernesto Vera is walking home from his job at a taco truck when three guys jump out of a car and assault him. Ernesto's not in a gang, he's not involved, but his sister is - and when Payasa hears that her innocent brother has been murdered, she wants revenge. As widespread rioting breaks out across the city, Ernesto's death triggers an astonishing sequence of events, not just for the gangs involved, but for the firefighters, nurses and law enforcement who must deal with the consequences.
In April 1992, after one of the most notorious, racially charged trials in American history, the city of L.A. exploded in violence. All Involved tells the interconnected stories of seventeen characters over six life-changing days, and transforms the truly extraordinary story of the L.A. riots into a vivid, electrifying and addictive work of fiction.

All Involved is a symphonic, pitch-perfect, superlative novel. It is visceral and adrenalin-fuelled, yet tender and even darkly comic. It is audacious, unflinching and subversive. It doesn't judge. It swallowed me whole.
Do not resist All Involved. It's the most compelling, moving, shocking and world-expanding novel you'll read all year; it sucks you in, then spits you out, permanently changed. I loved it with a frankly scary evangelical zeal.
All Involved is a monumental achievement. Ryan Gattis takes the reader into the broken, outraged heart of Los Angeles during the `92 riots and doesn't blink once at what he finds there.