Growing up in a small North Carolina town, Jess Hall is plunged into an adulthood for which he is not prepared when his autistic older brother, Stump, sneaks a look at something he is not supposed to see, which has catastrophic repercussions.

"A novel about cowardice and courage in the face of repression, from a powerful new voice of French-African literature. The imaginary country of Sumal is a happy place, until, that is, it's taken hostage by a fundamentalist jihadist organization called The Brotherhood. The populace quickly becomes locked in a climate of violence, falling under the control of the militias as they impose silence, terror and the most rigid moral laws. Prohibitions and...

"Erin Hosier and her family belonged to a strict evangelical church in Bainbridge, Ohio, for the first fourteen years of her life. But Erin was a rebel of the eighties who dyed her hair with cherry Kool-Aid while loudly defending liberal causes. Behind closed doors, she and her family were "five mentally ill people at different stages of development, screaming and flailing hysterically like hyenas." At the heart of the family was her father, Jack,...