The first book in Kerouac’s Duluoz Legend, a novella detailing the writer’s early life as refracted through the prism of the untimely loss of his brother

Unique among Jack Kerouac’s novels, Visions of Gerard captures the scenes and sensations of earliest childhood, the first four years in the life of Ti Jean Duluoz as they unfold in the short, tragic-happy life of his brother, Gerard. Set in Kerouac’s hometown of Lowell, Massachusetts, childhood’s intensity, innocence, suffering, and delight unfold as Gerard interacts with animals, has visions of Our Lady in heaven, astonishes the priest in the church confessional, and observes his family as they laugh and drink and weep—that is, when he isn’t sick and confined to bed.

A novel that Kerouac called “my best most serious sad and true book yet,” Visions of Gerard is a beautiful, unsettling, and melancholic exploration of the meaning and precariousness of existence.