Devil Is Fine

Longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

One of TIME Magazine’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2024.

An Indie Next Pick.

Still reeling from a sudden tragedy, our biracial narrator receives a letter from an attorney: he has just inherited a plot of land from his estranged white grandfather. He travels to a beach town several hours south of his home with the intention of selling the land immediately and moving on. But upon inspection, what lies beneath the dirt is far more complicated than he ever imagined.

In a shocking irony, he is now the Black owner of a former plantation passed down by the men on his white mother’s side of the family.

Vercher deftly blurs the lines between real and imagined, past and present, tragedy and humor, and fathers and sons in this story of discovering and reclaiming a painful past. With the wit and rawness of Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, Devil Is Fine is a gripping, surreal, and brilliantly crafted dissection of the legacies we leave behind and those we inherit.

“FULL OF MYSTERY, MAGIC, DARK COMEDY, AND HEART.” —Deesha Philyaw

“AN INTIMATE NOVEL, BY TURNS BRACING AND HILARIOUS.” —Maurice Carlos Ruffin

“PROFOUNDLY MOVING.” —Ben Fountain