A single day in Harlem, 1935, around a fourteen-year-old boy’s conversion on the threshing floor of his father’s church. Most of the book happens inside the prayers of the adults around him, which is how you get three generations of family history delivered without a single flashback feeling like one.
Gabriel is one of the great monstrous fathers in American fiction, and the book is careful to show you exactly how he was made before it shows you what he does.
The prose carries the cadence of the pulpit. It is a debut novel that reads like a late one.
Read June 2025.