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The El

A Novel

Author Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
Paperback
$17.00 US
Knopf | Vintage
5-3/16"W x 8"H
On sale Aug 12, 2025 | 192 Pages | 9780593686768
Grades 9-12
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From the co-editor of the bestselling anthology Never Whistle at Night, a semi-autobiographical novel that follows a group of teenage gang members as they trek across Chicago to a momentous meeting, inspired by the cult classic The Warriors

“Cool and real as hell.” —Tommy Orange, bestselling author of There There

An ordinary day in August 1979 dawns hot and humid in Chicago. Teenager Teddy is living with his dad after being kicked out of his mom’s house due to his gang activity. But Teddy has thrived in the Simon City Royals, and today, he'll be helping to lead a posse of the group's younger members south across the city to Roosevelt High School to attend a gathering of gangs forming “the Nation”—a bold new attempt at joining forces across racial lines. This holds particular importance for Teddy, as his branch’s only Indigenous member.

But when the meeting breaks up in gunshots and police sirens, Teddy must guide the Royals back across hostile territory, along secret routes and back alleys, and stop by stop on the thundering tracks of the El. In the face of violence from rival gangs and a secret Judas in the Royals’ ranks, Teddy is armed only with a potent combination of book smarts and street smarts, and by the guiding spirit of Coyote, who has granted him the power to glimpse a future only he may survive to see.

Immersed in the sights, sounds, and smells of the author’s beloved city, The El will transport you to that singular sun- and blood-soaked day in Chicago. It is a love letter to another time, to a city, and to a group of friends trying to find their place and make their way in a world that doesn’t want them.
THEODORE C. VAN ALST, JR. (enrolled member, Mackinac Bands of Chippewa and Ottawa Indians) is the author of Tillie Olsen Award Winning Sacred Smokes (2018, now in its third printing) and Electa Quinney Award Winning Sacred City (2021) as well as the editor of The Faster Redder Road: The Best UnAmerican Stories of Stephen Graham Jones (2015), all from the University of New Mexico Press. His work has been published in Southwest Review, The Rumpus, Red Earth Review, The Journal of Working-Class Studies, Chicago Review, Electric Literature, and Indian Country Today, among others. View titles by Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.
“Chicago will never die. Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. won’t let it.”
—Stephen Graham Jones, bestselling author of The Only Good Indians

“[Van Alst] is so off-handedly smart, and cool and real as hell. He writes the city beautifully, the way it chokes and breathes out the lives of its people, in too many ways to track, on one of its trains say, crowded and loud. Van Alst writes exactly like himself, a true original, writing about Native people in Chicago, about Native people involved with gangs, and with relationships to the city. He writes about the internal lives of what we have to call criminals, but that term itself is a misunderstanding in a stolen country, where laws made to benefit its thieves only make sense justice-wise in the same way that America called itself the land of the free even while it was led by leaders who owned slaves. Everything he writes is beautifully wrought, mean and bright, and surprisingly tender.”
—Tommy Orange, bestselling author of There There

"Chicago is built on stolen land, but its writers remain free to build their own cities of words, to reclaim their collective past and assert their individual present. In The El, [however your long-ass name will be used in this sort of copy!] constructs a new edifice for Chicago’s collective textual city. No obscure gang-banger graffiti tag symbolically claiming territory the powerful think they own, his contemporary indigenous, working-class, and poetic voice develops a whole new neighborhood. Read The El, and you will understand the El, and Chicago, from a vital new perspective."
—Bill Savage, editor of Chicago by Day and Night

About

From the co-editor of the bestselling anthology Never Whistle at Night, a semi-autobiographical novel that follows a group of teenage gang members as they trek across Chicago to a momentous meeting, inspired by the cult classic The Warriors

“Cool and real as hell.” —Tommy Orange, bestselling author of There There

An ordinary day in August 1979 dawns hot and humid in Chicago. Teenager Teddy is living with his dad after being kicked out of his mom’s house due to his gang activity. But Teddy has thrived in the Simon City Royals, and today, he'll be helping to lead a posse of the group's younger members south across the city to Roosevelt High School to attend a gathering of gangs forming “the Nation”—a bold new attempt at joining forces across racial lines. This holds particular importance for Teddy, as his branch’s only Indigenous member.

But when the meeting breaks up in gunshots and police sirens, Teddy must guide the Royals back across hostile territory, along secret routes and back alleys, and stop by stop on the thundering tracks of the El. In the face of violence from rival gangs and a secret Judas in the Royals’ ranks, Teddy is armed only with a potent combination of book smarts and street smarts, and by the guiding spirit of Coyote, who has granted him the power to glimpse a future only he may survive to see.

Immersed in the sights, sounds, and smells of the author’s beloved city, The El will transport you to that singular sun- and blood-soaked day in Chicago. It is a love letter to another time, to a city, and to a group of friends trying to find their place and make their way in a world that doesn’t want them.

Author

THEODORE C. VAN ALST, JR. (enrolled member, Mackinac Bands of Chippewa and Ottawa Indians) is the author of Tillie Olsen Award Winning Sacred Smokes (2018, now in its third printing) and Electa Quinney Award Winning Sacred City (2021) as well as the editor of The Faster Redder Road: The Best UnAmerican Stories of Stephen Graham Jones (2015), all from the University of New Mexico Press. His work has been published in Southwest Review, The Rumpus, Red Earth Review, The Journal of Working-Class Studies, Chicago Review, Electric Literature, and Indian Country Today, among others. View titles by Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.

Praise

“Chicago will never die. Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. won’t let it.”
—Stephen Graham Jones, bestselling author of The Only Good Indians

“[Van Alst] is so off-handedly smart, and cool and real as hell. He writes the city beautifully, the way it chokes and breathes out the lives of its people, in too many ways to track, on one of its trains say, crowded and loud. Van Alst writes exactly like himself, a true original, writing about Native people in Chicago, about Native people involved with gangs, and with relationships to the city. He writes about the internal lives of what we have to call criminals, but that term itself is a misunderstanding in a stolen country, where laws made to benefit its thieves only make sense justice-wise in the same way that America called itself the land of the free even while it was led by leaders who owned slaves. Everything he writes is beautifully wrought, mean and bright, and surprisingly tender.”
—Tommy Orange, bestselling author of There There

"Chicago is built on stolen land, but its writers remain free to build their own cities of words, to reclaim their collective past and assert their individual present. In The El, [however your long-ass name will be used in this sort of copy!] constructs a new edifice for Chicago’s collective textual city. No obscure gang-banger graffiti tag symbolically claiming territory the powerful think they own, his contemporary indigenous, working-class, and poetic voice develops a whole new neighborhood. Read The El, and you will understand the El, and Chicago, from a vital new perspective."
—Bill Savage, editor of Chicago by Day and Night

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