Trouble the Saints: A Novel

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

Overview

World Fantasy Award winner. "Juju assassins, alternate history, a gritty New York crime story . . . in a word: awesome." —N.K. Jemisin, New York Times-bestselling author
NPR Best Book of the Year

USA Today's "Five Books Not to Miss"

Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year

The dangerous magic of The Night Circus meets the powerful historical exploration of The Underground Railroad in Alaya Dawn Johnson's timely and unsettling novel, set against the darkly glamorous backdrop of New York City, where an assassin falls in love and tries to change her fate at the dawn of World War II.
Amid the whir of city life, a young woman from Harlem is drawn into the glittering underworld of Manhattan, where she's hired to use her knives to strike fear among its most dangerous denizens.
Ten years later, Phyllis LeBlanc has given up everything—not just her own past, and Dev, the man she loved, but even her own dreams.
Still, the ghosts from her past are always by her side—and history has appeared on her doorstep to threaten the people she keeps in her heart. And so Phyllis will have to make a harrowing choice, before it's too late—is there ever enough blood in the world to wash clean generations of injustice

Trouble the Saints is a dazzling, daring novel—a magical love story, a compelling exposure of racial fault lines—and an altogether brilliant and deeply American saga.

"As glamorous, smoke-filled, and noir as anyone could hope for. Trouble the Saints is the perfect lush summer fantasy read, with an ending that will stay with you long after you turn the last page." —Literary Hub

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250175335
Publisher:	Tom Doherty Associates
Publication date:	03/14/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	346
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

ALAYA DAWN JOHNSON has been recognized for her short fiction and YA novels, winning the 2015 Nebula Award for Best Novelette for "A Guide to the Fruits of Hawai'i," which also appears in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy (2015), guest edited by Joe Hill. Her debut YA novel, The Summer Prince, was longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature. Her follow up YA novel, Love Is the Drug, won the Andre Norton Award in 2015. A native of Washington, D.C., Johnson is currently based in Oaxaca, having finished her masters degree in Mesoamerican studies at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Editorial Reviews

Juju assassins, alternate history, a gritty New York crime story... in a word: awesome” —N.K. Jemisin, New York Times bestselling author of The Fifth Season

“Beware this magnificent beguilement of a novel: once begun, Alaya Dawn Johnson’s Trouble the Saints won’t let you go.” —Kelly Link, New York Times bestselling author of Get In Trouble

“A knotty, painful, gorgeously told historical fantasy in which nobody’s hands are clean, nobody escapes the consequences of their own actions and the past will not stay buried” –NPR, Best Books of 2020

"Beautiful prose and an omnipresent sense of regret build an intense, dark mood throughout the whole book. Johnson explores the intersection of race, violence and personal identity in this powerful, passionate story." —Bookpage, "Science Fiction & Fantasy: August 2020"

“Johnson’s secret history is a nuanced portrait of racism in all of its poisonous flavors, brutally overt and unsuccessfully covert. In musical prose, she also offers passionate and painful depictions of the love expressed in romance and friendship and the sacrifices such love can demand. A sad, lovely, and blood-soaked song of a book.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

“Literary firecracker” —Publishers Weekly

"If you wanted a heavily character-driven narrative, laced with mysticism, this is for you...Demanding of attention and a reader with intention, this story carries a girth that will satisfy literary and historical fiction readers alike." —Goodreads

"Expect a multidimensional approach to the context of the early 1940s, complete with World War II, being non-white in America, and misogyny, and how its characters imperfectly wade through it as they hurt, heal, protect, and betray... A wonderfully deep read for the forlorn New Yorker’s heart." —Black Nerd Problems

From the Publisher

★ 2020-04-13
The fates of three people intertwine in a World War II–era New York where some people of color are blessed and cursed with magic in their hands.

Phyllis, a light-skinned African American woman who can “pass” under many circumstances, has impossibly dexterous hands that wield murderous knives in the service of Victor, a Russian mob boss, and believes her kills serve justice. Her once and future lover, Dev, a half-Indian undercover cop posing as Victor’s bartender, whose own hands can sense threats to himself and others, can’t quite reconcile his feelings for Phyllis with his duty to a department that will never truly accept him as one of them. And Phyllis’ best friend, Tamara, an African American snake dancer and aspiring impresario at Victor’s club, with an oracular gift of reading cards, hopes that if she pretends she doesn’t notice the violent foundation of Victor’s empire, it won’t touch her. But the truths that each refuses to acknowledge and the death-haunted pasts that refuse to stay buried have dangerous implications for all three of them, both on the streets of New York City and in the supposedly quiet Hudson Valley town where Dev, Phyllis, and Tamara take an uncertain refuge. Johnson’s secret history is a nuanced portrait of racism in all of its poisonous flavors, brutally overt and unsuccessfully covert. She explores in deeper detail an issue she touched upon in her two YA novels, The Summer Prince (2013) and Love Is the Drug (2014): the incredibly fraught, liminal space of being a light-skinned person of color. In musical prose, she also offers passionate and painful depictions of the love expressed in romance and friendship and the sacrifices such love can demand.

A sad, lovely, and blood-soaked song of a book.

Kirkus Reviews