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Yetunde awakens aboard a slave ship en route to the United States with the spirit of her dead sister as her only companion. Desperate to survive the hell that awaits her at their destination, Yetunde finds help in an unexpected form—the Devil himself. The Devil, seeking a way to reenter the pearly gates of heaven, decides to prove himself to an indifferent God by protecting Yetunde and granting her a piece of his supernatural power. In return, Yetunde makes an incredible sacrifice.
Their bargain extends far beyond Yetunde's mortal lifespan. Over the next 175 years, the Devil visits Yetunde's descendants in their darkest hour of need: Lucille, a conjure woman; Asa, who passes for white; Louis and Virgil, who risk becoming a twentieth-century Cain and Abel; Cassandra, who speaks to the dead; James, who struggles to make sense of the past while fighting to keep his family together; and many others. The Devil offers each of them his own version of salvation, all the while wondering: can he save himself, too?
Steeped in the spiritual traditions and oral history of the Black diaspora, The Devil Three Times is a baptism by fire and water, heralding a new voice in American fiction.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
May 13, 2025 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781668648650
- File size: 426511 KB
- Duration: 14:48:32
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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May 1, 2025
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.COPYRIGHT(2025) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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Starred review from June 1, 2025
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(2025) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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James Fouhey deftly finds the voice of an emotionally torn boy--half Black/half white--a child of the plantation. Joniece Abbott-Pratt digs deep to deliver the tones of a clairvoyant who speaks to ghosts. And Robin Miles uses her theatrical background to give a storyteller's ease to this haunting narrative. Where there's slavery, the Devil can't be far behind, and in this ambitious novel magical realism, historical fiction, and biblical imagery seamlessly mix with a multigenerational tale that connects the coasts of Africa to the Reconstruction era and to the urban streets of post-Civil Rights America. All three narrators pour their considerable talent and, seemingly, their very souls into every word. Like the characters, did they make a pact with Lucifer? Absolutely spellbinding. B.P. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine
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