Devil Is Fine
A Novel
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FOR FICTION - LONGLISTED FOR THE MARK TWAIN AMERICAN VOICE IN LITERATURE AWARD - FINALIST FOR THE VIRGINIA LITERARY AWARDS - LONGLISTED FOR THE ASPEN WORDS LITERARY PRIZE - INDIE NEXT PICK - NAMED A BEST NOVEL OF THE YEAR BY ELECTRIC LIT - ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE'S 100 MUST-READ BOOKS OF 2024 - A CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY BEST BOOK OF 2024 - FEATURED IN THE LA TIMES, THE ROOT, AND THE CHICAGO REVIEW OF BOOKS
Still reeling from a sudden tragedy, our biracial narrator receives a letter from an attorney: he has just inherited a plot of land from his estranged white grandfather. He travels to a beach town several hours south of his home with the intention of selling the land immediately and moving on. But upon inspection, what lies beneath the dirt is far more complicated than he ever imagined. In a shocking irony, he is now the Black owner of a former plantation passed down by the men on his white mother’s side of the family.
Vercher deftly blurs the lines between real and imagined, past and present, tragedy and humor, and fathers and sons in this story of discovering and reclaiming a painful past. With the wit and rawness of Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, Devil Is Fine is a gripping, surreal, and brilliantly crafted dissection of the legacies we leave behind and those we inherit.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the wrenching latest from Vercher (After the Lights Go Out), a struggling biracial writer reckons with his painful family history. The unnamed novelist addresses his narration to his late 17-year-old son, Malcolm (the cause of Malcolm's unexpected death isn't revealed until later), as he grapples with his bitterness toward the publishing industry and his white grandfather, who lives in a nursing home and is estranged from the narrator because of "some racial stuff." After Malcolm's funeral, the narrator receives a letter from his grandfather's attorney, explaining that his grandfather had given Malcolm a mid-Atlantic oceanfront estate, and that it would now transfer to him. After human skeletons are discovered on the property, he learns it was once a slave plantation and has been passed down through the generations of his white ancestors. While visiting the property, he has vivid visions of an ancestor brutalizing enslaved people in the name of saving their souls. The boy heretic in his visions refuses to submit, saying, "Better to reign than serve." In a beautiful and weighty turn, these nightmarish scenes help the narrator to better understand Malcolm's rejection of the Christian faith his father attempted to instill in him. Readers won't be able to look away.
