A Visitation Of Spirits: A Novel

With A Visitation of Spirits, Randall Kenan continues James Baldwin's legendary tradition of 'telling it on the mountain.'--San Francisco Chronicle When A Visitation of Spirits was published, Randall Kenan (1963-2020) was instantly recognized as a writer of significance, and one who brought into literary fiction the southern Black, gay experience, one of the few writers to do so. His work has won the Lamba Literary Award for gay fiction, a Whiting Award, and the John Dos Passos Prize, and he was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship and the Prix de Rome. His groundbreaking first novel, A Visitation of Spirits, is the powerful story of Horace Cross, a popular and high-achieving sixteen-year-old boy, who wrestles with the guilt of discovering who he is, a young man attracted to other men and yearning to escape the narrow confines of Times Creek. Raised on stories of prophets, revelations, and dreams, his internal struggles take shape in his mind as demons and angels battling for his soul, culminating in one night of horrible and tragic transformation. Horace seeks help from his cousin, Reverand James "Jimmy" Greene, but he finds himself ill-prepared to help the boy. plagued by demons of his own. And as Horace spirals out of control, Jimmy must ask himself what it says about him and his community that they cannot reconcile the spirits of the past with those of the future. Weaving mythos and the hard realities of rural Black life and easily gliding between past and present, A Visitation of Spirits is a classic novel of growing up from a literary giant.

Author: Randall Kenan

Publisher: Grove Press

Publication Date: May 17, 2022

Number of Pages: 320 pages

Language: English

Binding: Paperback

ISBN-10: 080215929X

ISBN-13: 9780802159298