Henry of Atlantic City

Following his much-celebrated debut, Horace Afoot, Frederick Reuss returns with another endearing hero. This time it's a six-year-old Gnostic with a photographic memory. Henry is being reared - at least intermittently - by gamblers, thieves, whores, and priests in one of America's most notorious sin cities. But from time to time, he seems to believe that he's living as a saint in fifth century Byzantium. As in Horace Afoot, Frederick Reuss's new novel describes the labyrinthine terrain in which we shape our identities and search for meaning. And like Horace, young henry places his questions into a distant and possibly wiser world. For some reason, the stories of ancient Byzantium help henry make sense of his absurd - and sometimes dangerous - existence. Henry of Atlantic City is an ironic, funny, and heart rending account of the ways we become our own saviors by choosing what to believe.