All Involved - Softcover

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

Ryan Gattis is a writer and educator. His latest work, All Involved, is grounded in nearly two and a half years of research and background spent with former Latino gang members, firefighters, and other L.A. citizens who lived through the 1992 riots. Gattis lives in Los Angeles, where he is a member of the street art crew UGLARworks.