BRUISER

Chorão's brooding debut offers a first-person portrait of a nine-year-old boy who embarks on a life adventure of sorts when he runs away from his home on Manhattan's Upper West Side in the mid-1970s. Nicknamed Bruiser ("because I'm always bruised"), he's a somewhat sullen child at the mercy of a suicidal mother and a philandering father. His only outlets are running around his neighborhood or burrowing into the depths of the clothes hamper. Bruiser befriends resilient 10-year-old Darla, who lives with her pill-popping single mother across the alleyway and persuades Bruiser to run away with her. They board a bus with full backpacks and several hundred dollars swiped from their parents and head toward North Carolina, where Joey, a boy Bruiser became fond of while on summer vacation, lives. On a detour through West Virginia, they stop off to see Darla's long-lost father, but her reunion with him turns out to be a disappointment. Their parents are tipped off and immediately arrive on the scene, but the pair escape on a railway car full of oranges and head for Joey's house. A kindly Japanese farmer takes them in, but he cannot prevent a tragic tractor accident that renders Bruiser partially deaf. The search for Joey's house ends in another disappointment. Thoroughly discouraged, both decide to return home by ferry and end up in a rowboat heading into a hurricane. Starkly beautiful and unrelentingly grim, this novel looms like a roadside accident: harrowing to behold, yet impossible to ignore. 4-city author tour. (Mar. 25)