Lyrical, riveting, and haunting from its opening lines, None But the
Righteous is an extraordinary debut that signals the arrival of an
unforgettable new voice in contemporary fiction
In seventeenth-century Peru, St. Martin de Porres was torn from his body
after death. His bones were pillaged as relics, and his spirit was said
to inhabit those bones. Four centuries later, amid the havoc of
Hurricane Katrina, nineteen-year-old Ham escapes New Orleans with his
only valued possession: a pendant handed down from his foster mother,
Miss Pearl. There's something about the pendant that has always gripped
him, and the curiosity of it has grown into a kind of comfort.
When Ham finally embarks on a fraught journey back home, he seeks the
answer to a question he cannot face: Is Miss Pearl still alive? Ham
travels from Atlanta to rural Alabama, and from one young woman to
another, as he evades the devastation that awaits him in New Orleans.
Catching sight of a freedom he's never known, he must reclaim his body
and mind from the spirit who watches over him, guides him, and seizes
possession of him.