The General Fiction Gold Medal Winner of the 2022 Florida Book Awards
A Finalist for the Twenty-Third NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award
"Urgent, sharp and expansive...this exceptional debut is not a cautionary tale about the perils of drugs, but it certainly is the story of so many people right now, and it somehow leaves us with hope. Whats more, the rare if dark gems found along its ocean floors, all sharp and brittle and made of base desire, let us glean a part of whats at the heart of addiction itself." Tommy Orange, The New York Times
For fans of Denis Johnson and Ocean Vuong: A captivating, searing, and ultimately redemptive debut novel about coming of age on Floridas drug-riddled Gulf Coast and the enigmatic connection between memory and self
David has a mind that never stops running. He reads Dante andMoby Dick, he sinks into Hemingway and battles with Milton. But on Floridas Gulf Coast, one can slip into deep water unconsciously; at the age of fourteen, David runs away from home to pursue a girl and, on his journey, tries crack cocaine for the first time. Hes hooked instantly. Over the course of the next decade, he fights his way out of jail and rehab, trying to make sense of the world around hima sunken world where faith in anything is a privilege. He makes his way to a tenuous sobriety, but it isn't until he takes a literature class at a community college that something within him ignites.
All Day is a Long Timeis a spectacular, raw account of growing up and managing, against every expectation, to carve out a place for hope. We see what it means, and what it takes, to come back from a place of little controlto map ourselves on the world around, and beyond, us. David Sanchezs debut resounds with real force and demonstrates the redemptive power of the written word.
