The Assassination of Gabriel Champion

This modernist tale of the rarely depicted Los Angeles art scene explores themes of violence and redemption. Setting its stage in the diverse boroughs of pre-millennial L.A. and climaxing in the feverish streets of Paris, this work is a kaleidoscope of violent mood and memory, a meditation on art and artists, and an existential, atmospheric, and sometimes brutal parable on the complex nature of love. Writer NONA CHILDE is in love with artists. They are the very embodiment of all her romantic notions. So when she meets DANIEL CROSS, a gifted painter who is teetering on the brink of Heathcliffian torment (an intoxicating contrivance in Nona's mind), she is presented with the opportunity to finally complete the arc of a long-coveted torch song life. What she isn't prepared for is a real playing out of the scourge of an artist's soul; one far darker than any she could conjure with a pen. The relationship that ensues between the brooding Englishman artist and the passionate young American authoress thrusts them headlong into a kaleidoscope of violent mood and memory, of euphoric, self-indulgent, torrential love. They begin to tear apart as irascibly as they are brought together, but not before involving one ARTHUR HUGHES DUFRESNE, a local poet with a devastating past who succeeds in complicating the tangle, in this tale that asks the question: What can be forgiven?