Gabriel Bump's Everywhere You Don't Belong is a spiraling coming-of-age tale about abandonment and perseverance that highlights the moments that made its lead—and some that nearly broke him.

A ridiculous opening fight between Claude's father and a neighborhood man sets the novel's tone. It also introduces the idiosyncrasies of his family in their South Shore Chicago home. After Claude's parents split up and, one after the other, abandon him, Claude lives with his maternal grandmother and her troubled friend, Paul. Bereft of his childhood friends, Claude feels like a misfit until he meets Janice.

But then police brutality ignites a riot that storms right past Claude's front door. Instead of being centered in the tragedy, Claude, his friends, and his family bear the rippling effects of having their homes destroyed, their innocence shattered, and of facing the devastating loss of a close acquaintance. Restlessness takes root inside of Claude, and he begins searching for a way out of his neighborhood.

Claude applies to college in secret, but life at the Missouri university he chooses proves disappointing. He becomes further disenchanted when he's tokenized at the student newspaper, Prairie Executioner. Tasked with combing through past issues for topics on diversity, he loses hope that the school has his interests in mind. When Janice shows up at his dorm, desperate and on the run, Claude has the push he needs to leave the school and his entire past behind.

Within the text, Claude's family dynamics are startling, presented in a way that sparks with originality. Direct, pithy sentences are packed with nuance, and the distinctive narration style is intriguing. The book invites pondering, particularly around the emphases placed on its constant speech tags.

The ripped from the headlines plot of Everywhere You Don't Belong draws instant interest.

Raised on Chicago's South Shore by his sharp-tongued grandmother, who was in the movement back when, Claude McKay Love is something of a nerdy, timid outsider, leaning on friend Janice as he tries to find out who he is and where he belongs. A riot after a young African American's murder forces him to face the question: Do I stay or do I leave? With a 25,000-copy first printing and an eight-city tour.

DEBUT "I want to know who I am!" exclaims Claude McKay Love in this pointedly affecting debut novel, which opens in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood. Claude is a nerdy, timid outsider, raised by a sharp-tongued grandma from the civil rights movement who will do anything, even burn her beloved Dennis Rodman cardboard cutout, to expunge Claude's unhappiness after his parents vanish, and he's aware that his family expects great things of him, though he doesn't yet know whether he can deliver. Meanwhile, he considers his options, wondering whether he should stay or leave, as any young person might. That should be enough, but the simple act of trying out choices takes on a sharper edge when you're from a community shaped by the legacy of racism and beset by police brutality and street toughs who terrorize the protagonists yet are themselves trying to understand where they belong. After a deadly riot, Claude's effort to find himself carries him to college in Missouri, where he's joined by sort-of girlfriend Janice and works on the student newspaper. Yet he can't escape being defined by others as African American, instead of just as Claude, and again flees violence with Janice toward a place they might belong. VERDICT With deft writing and rat-a-tat, laugh-until-you-gasp-at-the-implications dialog, Bump delivers a singular sense of growing up black that will resonate with readers. [See Prepub Alert, 7/1/19.]—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Bump's astute and touching debut follows young Claude McKay Love, a black child learning to navigate contemporary Chicago's South Side after his parents' acrimonious split. Raised by his strong-willed, foul-mouthed Grandma and her best friend, a gay man named Paul, the duo are honest with Claude about his absent parents and needing to make his own way in life. As a teenager, Claude is advised by his grandma to stay far away from the Redbelters, a gang, telling him the members will never get further than the corner they're standing on. As the Redbelters gain notoriety, Grandma attempts to organize their neighbors to stand up to them, but to no avail: the neighborhood erupts in a standoff between gangs and police, forever transformed by shootings, destruction, and terror. Along with Grandma and Paul, Claude and his close friend Janice try to rebuild their lives after the violence without falling victim to despair. Hoping to leave his broken hometown behind, Claude heads to Missouri for college, where he discovers there's no way to outrun the past. Bump balances his heavy subject matter with a healthy dose of humor, but the highlight is Claude, a complex, fully developed protagonist who anchors everything. Readers will be moved in following his path to young adulthood. (Feb.)