title: The Seagull Reader: Stories (Second Edition)
author:  Joseph Kelly 
description: Joseph Kelly (PhD, University of Texas, Austin) is Professor of English at the College of Charleston. He is the author of America's Longest Siege: Charleston, Slavery, and the Slow March to Civil War and Our Joyce: From Outcast to Icon.
zlib_text: ![](Images/image00270.jpeg)
  
  _**Acknowledgments**_
  
  Thanks to all at Bantam Spectra, especially my editor, Juliet Ulman, and to
  Howard Morhaim and Katie Menick. Thanks also to my family for their support
  and patience; and to Bill Thompson, whose feedback improved this book greatly,
  and whose advice and help were instrumental in getting it published.
  
  _**About the Author**_
  
  FELIXGILMANlives with his wife in New York City.
  
  _Thunderer_ is his first novel.
  
  **He came to the city** at the end of summer, over the sea; leaning out over
  the boat’s plain prow, scanning the horizon, nervously telling beads of scale
  and bone through his thin fingers. He’d crossed half the world to come there.
  
  The sky over the Bay glittered with white gulls, diving and threading between
  blue air and sea, scavenging on the harbor’s busy life. Those birds were the
  city’s first sign, and they were a bright and lively one, lifting his spirits.
  
  “Into the city soon, Mr. Roon.” The captain clapped him on the back, gi