Kicking the Sky

by Anthony De Sa

This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.

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Pub Date Mar 25 2014 | Archive Date Apr 25 2014

Description

It was 1977 when a shoeshine boy, Emanuel Jaques, was brutally murdered in Toronto. In the aftermath of the crime, twelve-year-old Antonio Rebelo explores his neighborhood’s dark garages and labyrinthine back alleys along with his rapscallion friends.

As the media unravels the truth behind the Shoeshine Boy murder, Antonio sees his immigrant family--and his Portuguese neighborhood--with new eyes, becoming aware of the frightening reality that no one is really taking care of him. So intent are his parents and his neighbors on keeping the old traditions alive that they act as if they still live in a small village, not in a big city that puts their kids in the kind of danger they would not dare imagine.

Antonio learns about bravery and cowardice, life and death, and the heart’s capacity for love--and for cruelty--in this stunning novel.

It was 1977 when a shoeshine boy, Emanuel Jaques, was brutally murdered in Toronto. In the aftermath of the crime, twelve-year-old Antonio Rebelo explores his neighborhood’s dark garages and...

Advance Praise

“Kicking the Sky dares to tell the story about the messy dark side of a big city through the clear eyes of a 12-year-old boy teetering on the fence between observer and victim. The novel exposes everyday lies, greed and hypocrisy and even the pimping of boys with the same palpable clarity of the pig slaying in its early pages. It also takes on the tenderness, mystery and confusion of budding sexuality. Anthony De Sa has written a courageous novel.”—Jim Lynch, author of The Highest Tide, Truth Like the Sun and Border Songs

“From his childhood and adolescence in Portuguese Toronto, Anthony De Sa has brought us an unforgettable portrait of a city whose familiar landmarks are reconfigured by this descent through time. The intensity and fragility of boys on the cusp of adolescence is vividly captured, as is the portrait of a community whose insularity is both its strength and its weakness—a world where brutality and complicity are as common as affection and solicitude.”—Shyam Selvadurai, author of Funny Boy and The Hungry Ghosts