The El

A Novel

By: Theodore C. Van Alst Jr.

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.

©2025 Theodore C. Van Alst, Jr. (P)2025 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“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