The Children at the Gate

The compelling events of this dark and powerful novel take place in the restless, humming world of a hospital in a New England city. Nineteen-year-old Angelo DeMarco, who makes twice-daily rounds among the patients to take orders for the pharmacy where he works, shelters himself from life behind a barricade of toughness and arrogance. Sammy, the new orderly who suddenly emerges one night from the shadows of the children’s ward, is a human being unlike anybody Angelo has previously known. The encounter between the contemptuous skeptic from a devout Catholic family and the Jew who seems at first no more than a wild, eccentric clown has profound consequences for them both after the shocking drama of a few summer weeks.