Gabriel is the protagonist of The Back of the Turtle, the prodigal son of Samaritan Bay who returns to his extended family’s home after accidentally contributing to its destruction. A reserved and passive man, Gabriel struggles to maintain close relationships. After experiencing the fracturing of his family unit as an adolescent, he adopts a guarded approach to human connection because he believes that all relationships are impermanent. It’s only in biological research that he finds a world he can understand. Though he initially joins the field out of passion and curiosity, he’s soon seduced into the high-profit world of biotech.

Gabriel’s strong sense of ethics is not enough to prevent his talents from being co-opted by Domidion’s profit machine. Under Dorian, he helps to create GreenSweep, the extremely toxic herbicide that finds its way into Kali Creek and back to his ancestral reserve, where it kills his family and many others. Though he never intended for GreenSweep to leave Domidion’s lab, Gabriel must reckon with the unintended consequences of his creation and the question of whether he can be forgiven by others and himself. His return to Samaritan Bay is the catalyst of the town’s new beginning, placing him at the center of a new creation myth that parallels “The Woman Who Fell from the Sky.