A gripping, elegant debut novel about a young Black man caught between worlds of race and class, glamour and tragedy, a friends mysterious death and his own arrest, from an electrifying new voice.
An arrest for cocaine possession on the last day of a sweltering New York summer leaves Smith, a queer Black Stanford graduate, in a state of turmoil. Pulled into the court system and mandated treatment, he finds himself in an absurd but dangerous situation: his class protects him, but his race does not.
Its just weeks after the death of his beloved roommate Elle, the daughter of a famous soul singer, and hes still reeling from the tabloid spectacleas well as lingering questions around how well he really knew his closest friend. He flees to his hometown of Atlanta, only to buckle under the weight of expectations from his family of doctors and lawyers and their history in America.
But when Smith returns to New York, its not long before he begins to lose himself to his old lifedrawn back into the citys underworld, where his search for answers may end up costing him his freedom and his future. Smith goes on a dizzying journey through the nightlife circuit, anonymous recovery rooms, Atlantas Black society set, police investigations and courtroom dramas, and a circle of friends coming of age in a new era.
Great Black Hope is a propulsive, glittering story about what it means to exist between worlds, to be upwardly mobile yet spiraling downward, and how to find a way back to hope.
