NONE BUT THE RIGHTEOUS

A young man drifts across the country after being displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

Ham is a 19-year-old orphan whose last home was with his foster mother, Miss Pearl, and her son, Wally. Early in his time there, after he'd run away for a week, Miss Pearl gave him a pendant with a relic inside whose purpose, unbeknownst to Ham, was to bind him to their home. The fragment of bone in this pendant is said to contain the spirit of St. Martin de Porres, who died in 17th-century Peru, and it is this spirit who serves as the first-person narrator, keeping us close to Ham’s experiences. After fleeing New Orleans during the storm with only the clothes on his back and the pendant around his neck, Ham finds that he can't move on without learning what happened to Miss Pearl, leaving him doubly haunted. His travels take him from Alabama, where he stays with Deborah, a girl he meets when they both take shelter in a bar, to Atlanta, where he visits a friend from his adolescence named Mayfly. When Ham finds out that Deborah is pregnant with his child, he struggles to feel at home with her and her family, in his body, in his life. Martin’s spirit both watches and encourages Ham’s agitation, until he's compelled to return home. In this stunning debut, James brings together several beautifully drawn characters, each of whom is working to reconcile the tensions between belonging and exile, freedom and entrapment, while also trying to reckon with the ghosts (both literal and figurative) of the past. And yet, as Martin’s spirit comments regarding this struggle: “I know that we do not belong only to ourselves, that what loves us also seizes us.”

A mesmerizing story told by an impressive and captivating voice.