About the book
Chasing Gazelle
A story of speed, scars and the courage to keep running.
Some races last a lifetime
About the book
Caleb Thorson, a former soldier fighting the ghosts of war, believes he has outrun everything except himself. Eku Owusu, a brilliant collegiate basketball star from Nigeria, carries the scars of a childhood shaped by violence, loss, and survival. When their paths cross on the California coast, running becomes more than competition, it becomes refuge, reckoning and the thread that pulls them toward each other. Set against the rhythms of the ocean, the sharp edge of elite sport, and the quiet spaces where trauma and hope intersect, Chasing Gazelle is a story of love, trust, and the endurance it takes to rebuild a life.
More than . . .
More than a sports novel, Robert R. Greene Sands uses competition as a lens to explore identity, resilience, and the enduring human impulse toward pursuit, pressure, and connection. Blending the world of elite athletics with deeply personal narrative, the novel unfolds at the intersection of sport, culture, and psychological truth..
Advanced Praise for Chasing Gazelle
“Sport reveals the whole person, and Chasing Gazelle knows it. Through Caleb and Eku, Sands weaves trauma, culture, and elite performance into something luminous, reaching past the finish line to the human work of healing, trust, and belonging, and the courage to keep running toward peace.”
Belle Koclanes
Founder, Next Play Sport
Former WNBA and Division I Coach
“In his first novel, Dr. Robert Greene Sands has braided together his experiences in cultural anthropology, the military, and athletics. He paints a vivid portrait of two athletes against the breathtaking backdrop of California’s Santa Barbara coast. Chasing Gazelle is a stunning story of two wounded warriors running toward personal peace.”
Yvonne Pawelek
Former Director, Foreign Language and Culture Center
Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM), Washington
“This novel grips you with the gritty intensity of a trauma survivor; two, in fact. The story fleshes out two distinct paths of mitigating PTSD through obsessive focus on sport, routine, and controlling the environment, with special emphasis on the power of relationships and self-discovery.”
Jonathan Brown
Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.), USMC
International Affairs Program Manager
CH-46 Helicopter Pilot
Business Jet Pilot, NetJets
“Chasing Gazelle is breathtakingly descriptive and deeply felt. Rob’s vivid prose and masterful use of language bring every scene to vibrant life. By beautifully weaving his own passions and diverse interests into the narrative, he creates a profoundly powerful story of human connection.”
Lisa Cascio
Communications strategist and former NCAA Division I sports information director; SID for Old Dominion University’s 1996–97 National Finalist women’s basketball team
“Robert Sands captures the joy and pain of running in his fiction. Athletes of all levels can read his stories and take away a little inspiration for their next workout.”
Stephen Sands
Educator and Author of The Final Leg
Coming Fall 2026
The chase begins.
About the author
Robert R. Greene Sands, Ph.D., is an anthropologist, author, educator, athlete, and artist whose work explores the intersection of culture, trauma, human performance, resilience, and the biocultural foundations of lived experience.
The first half of his academic career focused on sport anthropology, where his participant-ethnographic research in junior college football, collegiate track and field, recreational basketball, and surfing produced books examining athletic identity, performance, and the cultural dimensions of sport. In 2008, he shifted toward applied anthropology, advancing cross-cultural competence and operational understanding for service members deploying worldwide.
More recently, as co-founder and Executive Director of the Pamlico Rose Institute for Sustainable Communities, he has expanded his work to include the human–nature connection, promoting a more integrated and holistic approach to wellness and resilience.
These professional threads, combined with personal experience as an athlete, coach, educator, and mentor, inform the emotional and thematic landscape of Chasing Gazelle. Sands is also the creative force behind Stoke of Nature, a mixed-media art practice grounded in natural textures, reclaimed materials, and the rhythms of coastal and forest environments.
He is the author of multiple books, including GutCheck: An Anthropologist’s Wild Ride into College Football, which examines sport culture through the lived experiences of athletes. Sands lives in Alexandria, VA with his wife and two dogs and writes/creates in his Cedar Knoll Studio .
Chasing Gazelle is his debut novel.
Cedar Knoll
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