Devil Is Fine

In this meta novel addressing the complexities of self-actualization, past and present traumas, and grief, Vercher (After the Lights Go Out) scripts one father’s journey from overwhelming loss to rebirth. Undone by the death of his 17-year-old son, an unnamed biracial professor and author is smothered by anguish. His distress is compounded when he is informed that he will inherit a mid-Atlantic oceanfront estate previously owned by his white grandfather and originally bequeathed to the man’s son. While visiting his new property, the man is distraught to learn that it was once a plantation, where archaeologists have unearthed the remains of enslaved people. Visitations from his son’s apparition as well as visions of his embodiment as one of his white ancestors and of his body morphing into a jellyfish further tilt his axis. With aid from two locals who become close friends and his son’s ghost, the father battles through personal issues surrounding race, mourning, and religion. Award-winning narrator Dion Graham admirably performs the myriad characters in this stylistically complex literary drama and convincingly communicates the unconventional text images found in the print edition.