Review by Booklist Review
The woman, Yetunde, awakens, shackled in the belly of a ship on the "deep, borderless blue" of the Middle Passage, alone and helpless until the elusive "laughing man" appears. Fayne's lively, irreverent debut novel, set in Western Tennessee, follows the fortunes of Yetunde's offspring by her enslaver down six generations of a tangled family tree haunted by ancestral ghosts, steeped in love, and watched over by a cunningly benevolent trickster, the Devil. Among Yetunde's many descendants, light-skinned Asa is raised as the plantation owner's heir. Louis is tricked into fatally wounding his half brother. Young Lucy endlessly sketches the "midnight woman" who appears in the shadows of her bedroom. Fayne beautifully evokes each character's unique voice and essence in dialogue and description--Ms. Lorraine leans on the hood of a car, hair in a beehive, skin the brown of the cigarillo between her lips. Drawing broadly on spiritual traditions, folklore, and history, Fayne dramatically reimagines the origins of centuries of Black history and the quest for freedom in the Devil's unexpected backstory.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A multigenerational family saga in which the Devil plays a leading role. Fayne's ambitious debut novel attempts to capture the Black experience through one family, across the long reach of history and geography, much like Yaa Gyasi'sHomegoing (2016) and Ayana Mathis'The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (2013). Here the story opens in the early days of American slavery, as a woman named Yetunde, captured and sent to the Laurent family plantation in western Tennessee, makes a deal with the Devil for her survival. (The Devil, for his part, has cut a deal with Jesus to watch over Black people in the hopes of returning to God's good graces: "That's why Black people have to go through hell to get free.") In the generations that follow, characters will indeed endure, but not without struggle. Yetunde, and her trademark yellow dress, will weave through the story as a spectral reminder of enslavement. The Laurent clan splits in two, Black and white, and various descendants attempt to find their place in the world as preachers, musicians, and artists. But though it's a meditation on race, concerned with slavery and the Great Migration--later sections are set in Chicago--the book is not overtly about racism, but focuses more on troubled (sometimes forbidden) relationships. Fayne's characters are often navigating a mesh of passions, faith, and family, recycled across the generations; Lucy, an aspiring artist seduced by her female teacher, has to make a difficult compromise to enter the art world like those that others did in different contexts. The novel's structure is busy and at times melodramatic, owing as much to soap operas as to Zora Neale Hurston. But the prose is consistently crisp and suffused with a feeling of hauntedness. A complex meditation on Black history with a Mephistophelian twist. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
