Miah Jeffra's American Gospel (Black Lawrence Press, $ 26.95) questions the idea of the American dream in a braided novel that weaves together how race, sexuality, gender, and class are affected when a developer begins displacing a neighborhood in a bid to make an amusement park. The novel is told in three voices, Peter Cryer, a queer mixed-race teenager navigating love and desire; Ruth Anne, his Irish Appalachian mother living in fear of domestic abuse by her estranged partner; and Thomas, a teacher and brother at the private Catholic school where Peter attends on scholarship. The three perspectives reveal an America struggling to find itself in the wake of commercialism, addiction, and toxicity. In each case, powerlessness leads to violence; this overarching theme of Gospel spans gender, sexuality, race, and class, as nearly every character or institution is affected by conditions created by white-collar corruption.
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