Angels at the Gate - by Sheri Joseph (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

At remote Rockhaven University, the shocking death of student Brantley Simms beneath the bell tower shatters the campus, a place that once felt safeguarded by local angels. A year later, Leah Gavin, who knew Brantley under strained circumstances, becomes study partners with his former roommate from a rival fraternity and begins to unravel the mystery surrounding Brantley's death. Her questions lead her back to Brantley's fraternity and her own closest friends, and from there into secret societies and the darker side of her beloved college. As Leah develops feelings for one boy, she finds herself entangled in a complicated relationship with another, who harbors his own suspicions about the tragedy. Caught between two people she cares for-- three if she includes the one who is gone-- Leah must confront the unsettling truths she discovers while continuing to navigate her own precarious life as a student. Angels at the Gate offers a poignant exploration of college life to the beat of a 1980s mixtape, set in an unusually insular environment permeated by misogyny and sexual repression.

Review Quotes

This deeply immersive coming-of-age serves up a compelling slice of dark academia that interrogates the complex ways gender roles intersect with class to impact privilege.

-The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Angels at the Gate is spot-on in its vivid evocation of campus life, especially the intricate nuances of relationships. . . . [it] achieves the rare success of being both a thriller and an intensely felt exploration of love in all sorts of forms.

-Story Circle Book Reviews

Sheri Joseph's mesmerizing Angels at the Gate is more than a campus novel, more than a mystery, more than a reflection on memory. It's heartbreaking, joyful, and utterly unforgettable.

-Kevin Wilson, author of NOTHING TO SEE HERE and THE FAMILY FANG

With an unerring eye for the complex dynamics of pre-social media campus life, Joseph elegantly captures the 80s, complete with a to-die-for playlist. Compulsively readable and deliciously dark.

-Leslie Pietrzyk, author of ADMIT THIS TO NO ONE and SILVER GIRL

If you love a campus novel -- and who doesn't? -- meet Leah, your tour guide through a beguiling mystery set among the lamplit paths and leafy towers of a college as vivid and tinged with melancholy as the one in your memory.

-Christopher Castellani, author of LEADING MEN

Through Joseph's evocative prose and adept characterizations, this gorgeous novel reminds us, once again, how our earliest relationships may suggest our paths, but our vulnerable early adult years cement our futures.

-Allison Amend, author of ENCHANTED ISLANDS and A NEARLY PERFECT COPY

If there's a novel that's better than Sheri Joseph's Angels at the Gate at recreating the intensity of bonds and friendships formed in college, I haven't read it. One of the great pleasures of this story, built around the gripping complications of a mysterious death at a prestigious southern college, is the way the story immerses the reader not just in college life, but in youth itself. There's a lot going on in a story that explores sexual repression as well as sexual awakening, as well as the machinations of power and privilege, but what I'll remember the longest, I suspect, is the evocation of youth and the sheer intensity of that time of life. Highly recommended.

-Ed Falco, author of THE FAMILY CORLEONE and TRANSCENDENT GARDENING

About the Author

Sheri Joseph is the author of the novels Where You Can Find Me and Stray, as well as Bear Me Safely Over, a cycle of stories. She has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and the Grub Street National Book Prize in fiction, as well as numerous residency fellowships including MacDowell and Yaddo. She lives in Atlanta, where she teaches in the creative writing program at Georgia State University.