Devil Is Fine

by John Vercher

Book Overview

Named an Indie Next Pick, one of TIME Magazine's 100 Must-Read Books of 2024, a Best Novel of the Year by Electric Lit, and longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize.

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...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1250894484
• ISBN13: 9781250894489
• Release Date: June 2024
• Publisher: Celadon Books
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

A beautiful, tragic, moving story that I didn't want to end

This book was both tragic and beautiful all at the same time and I'm so incredibly glad I decided to read it! It opens with the author speaking to his dead son on the way to his funeral. As a mother, this broke me immediately. We don't know how he was lost but the weight of much unfinished between them is palpable and you can feel the author's struggle with not only dealing with the obvious current tragedy but with letting go of all that was unsaid and left unresolved between them. Struggling with his own identity as a biracial man, he finds that a piece of property, left to his son by his mother's father, has now been passed on to him as his next of kin when his son dies. This was a man he wanted nothing from -- his estranged white maternal grandfather. He then travels to the property simply to sell it and in the process finds that it is a former plantation and he is now the owner, a sick irony I can't even imagine. He does meet some amazing people along the way and while I struggled to connect with him at first, they brought out the lighter side to him for me and I found myself warming to him quickly after that. His thoughts range from delusional drunken dreams to almost supernatural flashbacks, taking on roles that I can totally see as torturous ways your brain could try to deal with something as twisted as this situation he finds himself in. My heart broke for him, again and again. A beautifully tragic, moving story that I didn't want to end.