03/10/2025
Gupta debuts with a coming-of-age mystery thrill ride that exemplifies the subgenre that, inspired by 1980s films, has come to be called “kids on bikes,” but with a decided Staten Island flair, including elements of a gritty mobster story and a focus on the infamous Fresh Kills Landfill. “On June 19, 1998, Fresh Kills gave up its secrets to me,” announces narrator Rajiv Patel, Raj for short, an enterprising 14-year-old with both street and book smarts—plus a booming business selling bootleg CDs. As he strategizes ways to earn money to help his overworked single mother, Raj finds his summer upended by a chance meeting with Georgia, an intriguing new arrival from Mississippi, and by a run-in with the rival New Springville Crew, louts who love to crack bones and racist jokes. But things really spin out of control when Raj and his crew, The Victory Boys, witness an unspeakable crime out at Fresh Kills.
“So, now we have beef with gangsters?” asks Raj’s pal Deadbolt. “Full-on adults?” Garbage Town abounds with sharp dialogue, striking period detail, strong pacing, and heaps of heart as Raj and company deal with cops and gangsters, parents and street toughs, plus the confusions of growing up. Gupta excels at scenes where the heroes face up to their fears. The sleuthing and adventure thrill as they strive to secure evidence, face forces much more powerful than them, and—in a sad twist—try to suss out whether a cop is on their side or on the take.
Complicating it all, of course, are the challenges of those in-between years. As they experiment with love, drugs, and identities, Gupta’s characters feel like teens you could meet on any scalding summer day on Staten Island. When forced into unthinkable decisions, they make choices adolescents would actually make, and the fizzing flirtations are sweet, funny, and convincing. Period references will ping millennial nostalgia radars, but they never feel belabored. Garbage Town pulses with charm, suspense, and strong local color.
Takeaway: Vital coming-of-age thriller set on 1990s Staten Island.
Comparable Titles: Claire Jiménez’s What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez, Colson Whitehead’s Sag Harbor.
Production grades Cover: A Design and typography: A Illustrations: N/A Editing: A Marketing copy: A
2025-03-04
A group of teens stumbles across a criminal enterprise centered around their neighborhood dump in Gupta’s debut YA novel.
Staten Island, 1998: The neighborhood of Travis is home to Fresh Kills Landfill, the main dumping ground for New York City’s trash—among other things. For kids like Raj Patel, it’s a spot to be avoided, a place “of luminescent rivers, dog-sized rats, and rabid turkey vultures,” to say nothing of its connections to the local mafia family. Raj has enough on his plate without worrying about Fresh Kills—the high schooler runs his own lucrative business burning bootleg CDs for his classmates. He uses the money to help out his Polish American mom, who’s been forced to pull double shifts as a nurse’s aide at an eldercare facility ever since his Indian father split for Florida two years ago. On the night following his final day of freshman year, Raj, a new Mississippi transplant named Georgia, and Raj’s friends—known throughout the neighborhood as the Victory Boys—accidentally stumble across a murder-in-progress in the middle of the landfill. They manage to disrupt the proceedings (sort of), but now they have mobsters on their tails. If they want to get out of this quagmire with their lives, Raj and his buddies will have to confront the long-ignored garbage rotting in the heart of their town. Gupta evokes the time and place with sharp details and plenty of wit, particularly regarding the dump itself. “My science teacher never tired of reminding us that the only man-made structures visible from space were the Great Wall of China and the Fresh Kills landfill,” narrates Raj. “As far as we were concerned, those two were comparable—monuments to humanity’s limitless potential.” While the premise of a group of teens uncovering a mystery is well-trod territory, Gupta delivers on both sides of the equation: Raj and his friends—who include a pair of stoners called Deadbolt and Cheetah—are charmingly specific and memorably rendered, as is Travis’s multiethnic underworld.
An immersive teen adventure as big and eclectic as a Staten Island landfill.
