In his debut novel The Way to Get Here, Gavin Pate doesn't avoid everything I dislike about the openings of first-person narratives, but his writing's vigorous energy and the desperate circumstances he chooses to write about challenge the conventions I have come to loath. Pate's exuberant talent and his characters' fractured natures save his story from leaning too much on convention, and with his phrasing and with the tweaked tone of his events, he accomplishes something very rare: he makes the familiar seem new.

The novel opens with personal and national crisis. A man calling himself "Walden" flees Denver, Colorado, by bus. He leaves behind him a violent vehicular crime, an unfaithful wife, and a spreading power outage that will stretch to engulf the continent. As he runs, Walden is penniless and desperate, literally pursued by darkness. Fresh off the bus in Norfolk, Virginia, he is promptly beaten and robbed.

By way of full disclosure, I should point out that my review tends towards bias; the author and I are friends, and I know his publishers. We all graduated together from Naropa University's writing program. But if anyone thinks I'm letting Pate off easy, think again. I have my criticisms, and I know he's tough enough to take them. So all confessions aside, here's the verdict: Pate has written a very good first novel, and I think people should buy it and read it.

Now, conventional first-person narratives often start in an unfocused location, with a narrator recounting what life was like before the trigger moment that launched the story. It can be a rather boring exercise in nostalgic table-setting, one that amounts to "Life was hard, but we had a routine, until 'X' happened." There's a whisper of this convention in the opening pages of Pate's novel, but it's quickly smothered by Walden's seeming regret for every prior moment of his life. It's a risky move: a desperate, depressed, hopeless character can challenge a reader's sympathy. We all know sad drunks in bars can't stop themselves telling everyone of their horrible situations, but no one wants to listen. Walden deftly avoids becoming a sad drunk by never looking for sympathy. As a reader, I never truly care about Walden, yet his candor and earnest need for escape make him an intensely compelling character.

The world of The Way to Get Here is bleak and full of the type of unsheltered people who populate run-down neighborhoods and the dark corners of broken buildings. It's not a world of easily found solutions, and some of the people in it aren't looking for a way out – at least not one that involves rising above the poverty and driftlessness. As Walden says on the very first page: "I'm looking for the bottom, the base. A place where the mind and soul lose all distinction." Likewise, Pate's novel isn't for those who look for easy solutions or happy endings. His writing doesn't take cheap shots, and he knows that individuals in difficult situations must often choose between one bad thing and another worse, which means that their redemptions, though significant, are often small.

It's this hard-earned grace that makes me glad to add this book to my collection. It also means I won't be loaning it out to anyone – you'll have to get one for yourself.