Hush Harbor: A Novel

by Anise Vance

Overview

Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize
A Most Anticipated Book in The Rumpus
A Most Anticipated Crime Fiction Book of Fall 2023 in CrimeReads
A Debutiful Can't-Miss Book?

A resistance group takes America's racial reckoning into its own hands in this powerful, stirringly original debut novel

After the murder of an unarmed Black teenager by the hands of the police, protests spread like wildfire in Bliss City, New Jersey. A full-scale resistance group takes control of an abandoned housing project and decide to call it Hush Harbor, in homage to the secret spaces their enslaved ancestors would gather to pray.

Jeremiah Prince, alongside his sister Nova, are leaders of the revolution, but have ideological differences regarding how the movement should proceed. When a new mayor with ties to white supremacists threatens the group’s pseudo-sanctuary and locks the city down, the collective must come to a decision for their very survival.

Haunting, provocative, heart-pounding and tender, Hush Harbor presents a high-stakes world grounded on the thought-provoking premise: What would you sacrifice in the name of justice?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781335449528
Publisher:	Hanover Square Press
Publication date:	09/05/2023
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	294,052
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Anise Vance is a writer from the African and Iranian diasporas. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Rutgers University-Camden. As a Mitchell Scholar, he received an MPhil in Geography from Queen's University Belfast. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and currently lives in North Carolina with his wife and two children.

Editorial Reviews

"Throughout, there’s a sense of edgy anticipation, and not just because of the content. Readers will also understand that they are encountering an exciting new voice in literature."—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal STARRED review

“A provocative and engrossing story study on racial tensions and crimes in America. Vance doesn’t miss a beat and will leave readers on the edge of their seats page after page.”—Debutiful

"Right from the start, from its very first pages, 'Hush Harbor' has a delicious, ice-down-your-spine foreboding that you can’t shake... This novel is taut, like walking a tightrope over flames."–Philadelphia Tribune

“From the opening chapter of Anise Vance’s Hush Harbor, I was totally engrossed. This powerful narrative strikes like a mighty python, wrapping itself around your heart and refusing to let go. At first, you think it’s the rhythmic tale of race war in America, then you see it’s far more complicated than that. It’s about human suffering and who gives a damn; it asks the question 'Will you fight oppressions that have nothing to do with you?'; It’s a song of redemption for a people and a nation too consumed with themselves to see each other. With this novel, Vance conjures black ancestral texts and voices such as Sutton Griggs’s Emperium in Emperio and Martin Delaney’s Blake. All I can say is, this book is an absolute must-read.”—Daniel Black, author of Don’t Cry For Me and Black on Black

“An emotional, conceptual, page-turning tour-de-force.”—Shelf Awareness

“A tension wire crackling with electricity, Hush Harbor dazzles with incredible writing and boils with righteous fury. I could not stop reading.”—Lauren Grodstein, author of Our Short History and A Friend of the Family

"Taut, gripping, morally complex, and masterfully executed, Hush Harbor could not be more timely. Anise Vance illuminates America’s racial realities with unflinching, clear-eyed vision while also asking a timeless question. How do we remain humane to those who strip us of humanity? This is a marvelous achievement."—Ye Chun, author of Hao and Straw Dogs of the Universe

“At its fiery core, Hush Harbor is about the nearly unspeakable: a 21st century American Revolution. Through the harrowing story of its inconsolable, if beautiful and potent, rebels struggling in sanctuary against the violence of racial inequity, Anise Vance has revealed nothing less than the secret fears and tender solidarities that reside in our nation’s troubled heart. Agile, electrifying, a singular reading experience.”—Michael Zapata, author of The Lost Book of Adana Moreau

“Hush Harbor examines the monumental task of resisting empathy and confronting the brutal patterns that allow injustices to survive. Anise Vance delivers with a cast of vibrant characters who converge in a rich setting, each seeking the best way to correct some of the world's wrongs. In doing so, they give up their own comfort, dreams, safety, and peace, pushed into survival mode while wrestling with their own relationships and personal histories. Cinematically told, this debut takes off from page one and doesn't slow its pace, just as do the book's heroines and heroes.”—Diane Marie Brown, author of Black Candle Women

“Hush Harbor is an epic novel of utopian hope in a dystopian world.”—CrimeReads

From the Publisher

★ 09/01/2023

DEBUT Hush Harbor: it's the term used for a safe place where enslaved people in the United States could meet to pray. In Vance's debut, a bold look at a possible next step in the struggle for social justice, it's also the name given to an abandoned housing project in Bliss City, NJ, taken over by a resistance group after the police shoot an unarmed Black teenager. For them, the issue is not resistance but revolution; it's too late for protest, lawsuits, and riots, and it's time to replace white supremacy. As the novel opens, Hush Harbor is surrounded by checkpoints, with the police and National Guard everywhere, and Malik has arrived from North Carolina to join the effort, recruited by a former campus leader at his university. The way they sneak in and about Hush Harbor has the feel of a military operation, which intensifies when the audience meets revolutionary leaders Jeremiah Prince and his sister Nova. But once you have proclaimed revolution, how to proceed? How far will the violence go? As divisions form within the group, the ever-questioning Malik becomes a major force moving to the novel's visceral, thought-provoking end. VERDICT Throughout, there's a sense of edgy anticipation, and not just because of the content. Readers will also understand that they are encountering an exciting new voice in literature.—Barbara Hoffert

Library Journal

A tension wire crackling with electricity, Hush Harbor dazzles with incredible writing and boils with righteous fury. I could not stop reading.”

author of Our Short History Lauren Grodstein