Courttia Newland 
Gospel According to Cane 
A Novel

Years after her son was abducted, a mother opens the door to a young man in this “unique and very moving novel” (Booklist).   Beverley Cottrell had a prestigious job, a beautiful husband and baby boy. It was all stolen from her one winter afternoon when her son, Malakay, was kidnapped from a parked car. Despite a media campaign, a police investigation, and the offer of a reward, Malakay was never found. Beverley’s marriage dissolved, and her husband left England for the United States with a new wife.   Moving from the leafy suburbs to the inner city to reside in a west London housing project, Beverley cocooned herself in grief, growing more isolated with each passing year. After two decades she has given up any hope of finding closure, and teaches children at the local community center, bright kids thrown on society’s scrap heap. Then a young man starts appearing wherever she goes. Beverley is convinced that he’s stalking her. One dark evening he gets past her security door and calls through her letterbox. He tells her not to be scared. He says that he is Malakay, her son . . .  The Gospel According to Cane is an emotional, suspenseful novel—“part homecoming narrative in the vein of Toni Morrison’s Beloved and part haunting tale of loss similar to Ernest Gaines’s In My Father’s House [that] will appeal to all lovers of literary fiction” (Library Journal).   “As Bev confesses in her journals to events that make her appear less than the fragile idealist she first appeared, Newland’s tale gathers pace and tension. Violence becomes a real possibility. Happy ending or sad? Newland delivers a bit of both in this complex, cathartic portrait of an intelligent, if not always sensible woman, who refuses any longer to be defined by loss.” —Toronto Star   “A thrilling read, full of psychological tension and drama.” —Yvette Edwards, author of The Mother