Black and white was never so gray, and gray was never so vibrant as it streams across the pages of David Anthony Durham's new historical novel, "Walk Through Darkness."

While contemporary activists seek slave reparations, Durham explores the complexities of slavery from a modern black man's perspective. It's not a rant, but a contemplative journey in which good is always tainted, bad is never pure, and black and white blend to gray.

The desperate condition of African-Americans before and after the Civil War is Durham recurring theme.

In "Gabriel's Story," the protagonist is a 15-year-old African-American boy in the empty middle of the continent after the Civil War, caught between youth and manhood, naiveté and wisdom, family and flight. It was a classical bildungsroman - a novel about the moral and psychological growth of the main character -- told in masterful prose reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy.

In "Walk Through Darkness," Durham retraces his literary steps in a different landscape and a different time: That troubled slice of America between Virginia and Pennsylvania where slavery and abolition collided in the anxious twilight before the Civil War.

William's story also traces through complex historic and cultural issues. If you were expecting Durham, by virtue of being an African-American, to oversimplify an issue that split America down the middle, you've been reading too many racial polemics. We glimpse extraordinarily humane slave owners, mercenary blacks who gleefully profit from trapping runaways, and a wide array of men and women who are unexpectedly - and refreshingly - conflicted about human bondage.

As he did with his first book, Gabriel's Story, Durham has provided readers with a book that works on many levels. First of all it's a hell of a story. This is an exciting adventure, an intelligent page-turner. Interesting, well-drawn characters, who, like people in "real life," can act in unpredicted ways. These characters rank with those created by Charles Frazier in "Cold Mountain."
If you've ever grappled with imagining the lives of slaves in 19th century America, their struggles and the response of whites to them, reading "Walk Through Darkness" will help.
The story concerns a slave, William, escaping a cruel master and his search for his pregnant lover. Durham intersperses this tale with relentless pursuit of the protaganist by a tracker.
While spinning this fascinating yarn, Durham offers a hard look at a time and place not so distant and the attitudes that pervaded American life.
This is Durham's second book, following the fantastic "Gabriel's Story". He is two for two, having hit both out of the ballpark.

Walk Through Darkness is a powerful tale of the trials and tribulations of slavery in early American history and how the forces of love, truth and redemption can at times work to right the wrongs of that hateful period.

In his novel, David Anthony Durham tells a story of William, a fugitive slave, who places his life in danger to find his pregnant wife and deliver her to freedom. With little knowledge of his surroundings and only occasional help from random strangers, William travels from down South to Philadelphia. During his travels, William encounters many hardships, which force him to grow into a stronger man. First, he is tricked, then captured, by a group of slave traders and prepared for sale. Forced to endure the cramped quarters and debasing actions of his captors, he begins to lose hope of his goal, only to be freed through a violent uprising, which results in the death of his captors. On the run again, William reaches Baltimore and stows away upon a trading ship, only to be found and once again returned to shackles. It is here, while befriended by the ship's Captain, that William begins to learn the larger lessons of life. With one more chance to reach his goal, he is given the opportunity to escape, and through a stroke of luck, finally ends up in Philadelphia. Hungry, tired and lost, William succumbs to yellow fever and would have died had it not been for the help of a stranger. This Samaritan only asks that he understand her altruistic ways and her desire to help him become a free man. Fully recovered, he discovers his wife's whereabouts and makes plans to rescue her from her surroundings.

Throughout William's journey, we follow a parallel story of a Scottish tracker, Andrew Morrison, who is hired to find, capture, and bring William back to his master in one piece. While his motives are unclear at first, it becomes obvious that Morrison's past history within America has created a man who is at odds with his identity and is wrestling with his quest for redemption. With his trusted hound at his side, Morrison eventually ends up in Philadelphia to find and capture the fugitive slave.

The book ends with a suspenseful account of the various forces that are working for and against William in his quest for freedom. With violence an everyday possibility, many lives are ruined because of their participation in helping an innocent person seek his dream. However, even with powerful currents working against him, William ends up on his way to freedom through the help of many of those who were opposed to the evil of slavery that flowed through American veins.

Walking Through Darkness is a heavy read that yields an enormous amount of satisfaction. It is clear that David Anthony Durham has become a literary force to reckon with and is among the new cadre of African American writers like Paul Beatty, Guy Johnson, and Colson Whitehead, who have brought new stories into the mainstream literary world, without sacrificing their integrity. Once again, Durham has used his deft literary brush to create a tale complete with vivid pictures of life and death during this most turbulent time in American history.

When I consider buying a book I look it over asking two questions. One, does the author have a story to tell? Two, does he or she have the skills to tell that story compellingly? As far as "Gabriel's Story" is concerned, the answer is yes on both counts. The story is strong both because it has a tight spine along which the narrative progresses and because the author picks up on an under-acknowledged feature of the American West, namely the role African-Americans played in its history. The novel educates, but it does so effortlessly, so that a reader is transported along on an adventure tale, probably not even noticing how much the novel adds new dimensions to writing about the West. As for the author's skills... He's got it. The narrative reads like some combination of "Lonesome Dove" and "Paradise", somehow spliced together with a cinematographer's eye for horizon-lines, with a soft heart for the family scenes and a keen eye for the violent passages. And it even has a satisfying ending. That's rare these days and seems especially hard for first novelists to pull off. Congrats to the author.

I picked up this book after reading the USA Today review, which was essentially an unconditional rave. I decided to give it a try, but figured I'd probably be disappointed, as few books live up to the praise heaped on them. But GABRIEL'S STORY was a pleasant surprise. It begins with vivid homesteading scenes - all the toil and the poverty of it. Makes me glad I wasn't a homesteader, and it made it reasonable that Gabriel would want to run away from it. The journey that he sets off on is truly engrossing, well-plotted, with beautiful language and great descriptions of the Western landscape.

It looks like the novel is being compared to Cormac McCarthy's work. There are some similarities, but GABRIEL'S STORY is a bit more hopeful than McCarthy's work. The world is still harsh and dangerous, but Durham seems to have more faith in humanity, in family and friends. Also, I thought it was interesting that the reviewer in USA Today said that he was a city-dwelling white guy that still got into this book about a black boy in another century out on the plains. I felt the same way. Yes, the main characters are black, but their racial identity is only part of the whole world of the story. They're black like James Joyce's characters are Irish or Faulkner's are Southern - it matters, but it doesn't change the fact that anybody can connect with them. Altogether a really good novel.

Here is my reaction to one of the best books I have ever read. The book is "Gabriel's Story" by David Anthony Durham. The action takes place in the 1870's. The protagonist is Gabriel, an African-American youth who has just turned 16. The other characters are his brother Ben, just turned 14; his step-father, Solomon; his mother, and his uncle. Gabriel's parents were freed slaves. After their freedom, they lived in Baltimore, where Gabriel enjoyed the big city life. Then his father dies, and his mother decides to go west to Kansas to join and marry her first love, Solomon. The two were separated by slavery. Gabriel doesn't realize that they were in love before this time. Gabriel resents his mother's remarriage and the hard life homesteading on the Kansas prairie. He has all of a teenager's resentment of everything with something real to pin them on. He makes a friend, an African-American orphan his age whose name is James. Together the boys decide to join a group of cowboys and help them drive some horses west to Texas. What the boys don't realize is that these are very bad men they have fallen in with -- the very worst men there could be. As the trip begins, Gabriel and James gradually discover what these men really are, and now their greatest desire is to get away from them. The rest of the novel contains their picaresque travels with the men, trying to leave the men, and trying to return to Kansas. The author has done a marvelous job with this book. The plot is exciting and adventurous, with many twists and turns. The characters and their relationships are complex. The description is wonderful. I felt I was with Gabriel every step of the way on his journey. On Sunday I read in a frenzy from 2 to 6 because I couldn't stop until I finished this book. At times my heart was pounding and I almost stopped breathing as I said aloud, "Oh, no!" I was so involved in this. In addition, the author's writing is beautiful and eloquent. I wouldn't have predicted that I would fall in love with a book one might call a "Western," but this novel defies categorization. The aspect of African Americans homesteading is unusual and interesting. I immediately wrote to the author to thank him for this book, and I hope other people will enjoy it as well. It might be a good one to recommend to teens.