Air Is a Soaring Story of Fast-Paced Action and Social Change
Ryan Gattis has been described as the West Coast’s Richard Price, a writer who magically captures the pulse and poetry of a city’s streets. He made a splash in 2015 with the publication of All Involved, an ambitious novel set before, during, and after the 1992 Rodney King riots in Los Angeles. Despite being a self-described “white-boy fiction writer,” Gattis was able to connect with street artists and gang members in Los Angeles to get the real, raw stories of what happened during those chaotic days, solidifying his reputation as a writer who gets it: the violence, honor code, and moments of grace that occur in the country’s toughest neighborhoods.
All Involved
Paperback $19.99
All Involved
By Ryan Gattis
Paperback $19.99
Which makes Gattis the perfect choice to bring Adaptive Studio’s story to life. Adaptive’s strategy of identifying the best unproduced scripts and giving them a second chance as novels pays immediate dividends with Gattis’s Air, a story that startles with its raw immediacy. Air is the story of Grey, a 17-year-old boy who witnesses his black mother’s murder at the hands of his deranged white father in Colorado, and is promptly shipped off to Baltimore to live with his Aunt Blue. Angry and confused, Grey feels gray, as a biracial kid dropped into a black neighborhood in a strange city. All Grey knows is that he loves to catch some air on his bike, riding as fast as he can and launching himself into what feels to him like freedom—and it’s the pursuit of that sense of freedom that sends Grey hurtling into the complex world of modern race relations, centered on the growing firestorm concerning police overreach and brutality in modern America.
The Complexity of Race
Air doesn’t make it easy. The main character’s adopted name—the second of three names he acquires, after his birth name but before he’s dubbed “Air” by his friends—isn’t just a play on his mixed ethnic background, it’s also the story’s true setting: in the world’s gray areas. Grey feels he belongs nowhere. He’s not white, but he’s not considered black by the Baltimore kids he meets. The book avoids stereotypes, offering complex characters who are smart, tech-savvy, and more concerned with making the world a better place than anything else. While the mostly white police officers are the enemy, they’re portrayed with detail and depth.
A Modern Message
Air is a modern story in every way, discarding well-worn tropes about race and prejudice in America in favor of finding new, rawer realities. Grey meets Akil, a boy who has also lost his mother, and the two discover a shared love for “air,” riding dirt bikes through the city streets as fast as they can and pulling increasingly dangerous stunts. Soon they hook up with local legend Kurtis, famous for his online stunt videos and recklessness. Kurtis pushes Grey to follow in his footsteps, and after a fantastic stunt is caught on video, Grey receives his new name, Air, and the fame that comes with it. But after they lose one of their own to a shocking act of police violence, the group becomes focused on what they can accomplish with their fame, forming the Air Railroad. “The Underground Railroad was about being hidden for the sake of survival,” a member says. “These days, we need the exact opposite.”
The Context
Gattis’ characters aren’t living in a bubble. They evince an awareness of history, dropping references not only to the Underground Railroad but to Ellison’s Invisible Man and other cultural and historical touchstones, while navigating the thoroughly modern world of online videos, Internet payment systems, and other technologies. Despite the ever-present specters of racism and institutional abuse, Air and the Air Railroad are active, effective players in a long game they know has implications way beyond Baltimore and their own individual tragedies. They’re actively starting a movement.
The Heart
Gattis doesn’t lose sight of his characters’ humanity. These are people, not plot tokens. His relationship with his Aunt Blue is wonderfully depicted; she leaves him novels to read and is a strict disciplinarian, but she’s willing to discuss things with him and always listens to his side, even admitting when he has a point. The other characters have their own emotional core—no one in this book is a cardboard cutout, existing just because the plot requires them to.
The Action
Grey and his friends are trapped at the beginning of the book, and only find release when they ride, when they catch some air. As their search for personal freedom turns to a search for justice, the “air” becomes bigger and bigger, culminating in a stunt so ambitious and dangerous it can’t fail to catch the attention of the entire world. Gattis’s descriptions of the stunts read like mini-sequels to Ocean’s 11, involving a lot of planning and practice, technical gadgetry, and heart-pounding payoffs. Air is a powerful book, equal parts urban action story, civil rights narrative, and thriller. Anchored by the compellingly real voice of Air himself, it’s a book that offers a new perspective on current events as it entertains.
Read more about Adaptive Studios here.
Which makes Gattis the perfect choice to bring Adaptive Studio’s story to life. Adaptive’s strategy of identifying the best unproduced scripts and giving them a second chance as novels pays immediate dividends with Gattis’s Air, a story that startles with its raw immediacy. Air is the story of Grey, a 17-year-old boy who witnesses his black mother’s murder at the hands of his deranged white father in Colorado, and is promptly shipped off to Baltimore to live with his Aunt Blue. Angry and confused, Grey feels gray, as a biracial kid dropped into a black neighborhood in a strange city. All Grey knows is that he loves to catch some air on his bike, riding as fast as he can and launching himself into what feels to him like freedom—and it’s the pursuit of that sense of freedom that sends Grey hurtling into the complex world of modern race relations, centered on the growing firestorm concerning police overreach and brutality in modern America.
The Complexity of Race
Air doesn’t make it easy. The main character’s adopted name—the second of three names he acquires, after his birth name but before he’s dubbed “Air” by his friends—isn’t just a play on his mixed ethnic background, it’s also the story’s true setting: in the world’s gray areas. Grey feels he belongs nowhere. He’s not white, but he’s not considered black by the Baltimore kids he meets. The book avoids stereotypes, offering complex characters who are smart, tech-savvy, and more concerned with making the world a better place than anything else. While the mostly white police officers are the enemy, they’re portrayed with detail and depth.
A Modern Message
Air is a modern story in every way, discarding well-worn tropes about race and prejudice in America in favor of finding new, rawer realities. Grey meets Akil, a boy who has also lost his mother, and the two discover a shared love for “air,” riding dirt bikes through the city streets as fast as they can and pulling increasingly dangerous stunts. Soon they hook up with local legend Kurtis, famous for his online stunt videos and recklessness. Kurtis pushes Grey to follow in his footsteps, and after a fantastic stunt is caught on video, Grey receives his new name, Air, and the fame that comes with it. But after they lose one of their own to a shocking act of police violence, the group becomes focused on what they can accomplish with their fame, forming the Air Railroad. “The Underground Railroad was about being hidden for the sake of survival,” a member says. “These days, we need the exact opposite.”
The Context
Gattis’ characters aren’t living in a bubble. They evince an awareness of history, dropping references not only to the Underground Railroad but to Ellison’s Invisible Man and other cultural and historical touchstones, while navigating the thoroughly modern world of online videos, Internet payment systems, and other technologies. Despite the ever-present specters of racism and institutional abuse, Air and the Air Railroad are active, effective players in a long game they know has implications way beyond Baltimore and their own individual tragedies. They’re actively starting a movement.
The Heart
Gattis doesn’t lose sight of his characters’ humanity. These are people, not plot tokens. His relationship with his Aunt Blue is wonderfully depicted; she leaves him novels to read and is a strict disciplinarian, but she’s willing to discuss things with him and always listens to his side, even admitting when he has a point. The other characters have their own emotional core—no one in this book is a cardboard cutout, existing just because the plot requires them to.
The Action
Grey and his friends are trapped at the beginning of the book, and only find release when they ride, when they catch some air. As their search for personal freedom turns to a search for justice, the “air” becomes bigger and bigger, culminating in a stunt so ambitious and dangerous it can’t fail to catch the attention of the entire world. Gattis’s descriptions of the stunts read like mini-sequels to Ocean’s 11, involving a lot of planning and practice, technical gadgetry, and heart-pounding payoffs. Air is a powerful book, equal parts urban action story, civil rights narrative, and thriller. Anchored by the compellingly real voice of Air himself, it’s a book that offers a new perspective on current events as it entertains.
Read more about Adaptive Studios here.