10/25/2021
James debuts with the diffuse account of a young man’s travails in the months after a hurricane devastates his hometown of New Orleans. Ham unknowingly carries a centuries-old spirit in a locket around his neck, that of Martin, a Dominican priest. It is through Martin’s eyes that the reader sees Ham, whose speech and movements Martin controls. Like Martin, Ham finds people he can latch on to. First, Ham tracks down Mayfly, a transient he met as a child, in Atlanta. Next, he returns to Deborah, with whom he’d escaped a submerged New Orleans for rural Alabama. Her family represents an accepting, but monotonous, life to him, and he itches to return to New Orleans, resisting Martin’s attempts to make him settle down with Deborah, which would make him easier for Martin to inhabit. James creates intricate character portraits, lush with details of family histories and pathologies, but the extended mood piece doesn’t really amount to a story. Though the narrative lacks urgency, it effectively imparts the protagonist’s feeling of trying to find his way to a home that no longer exists. Readers will have to be patient to get the payoff here. Agent: Stephanie Delman, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc. (Jan.)
12/01/2021
DEBUT Eleven-year-old Ham disrupted his foster mother's carefully ordered family routines. In an effort to control him, Miss Pearl gives him a locket that houses the relic and spirit of St. Martin de Porres. The spirit guides and controls Ham as he maneuvers through an awkward adolescence. Just as Ham begins to establish his adult life, Hurricane Katrina arrives. At the insistence of Deborah, a young woman he meets in the pre-storm chaos, he leaves New Orleans, a split-second decision that upends all that he knows. Dazed from his sudden escape, Ham initially recovers in Alabama at Deborah's home, then in Georgia at the home of his childhood friend Mayfly. Desperate to find out what happened to his foster mother, Ham makes his way back home, struggling with the priest's spirit every step of the way. VERDICT Fulbright Scholar James debuts with a languid character study that meanders through key memories and thoughts of the protagonist and the influential individuals surrounding him. The amorphous nature of James's tale may be challenging for readers who prefer a straightforward plot line.—Joy Gunn, Paseo Verde Lib., Henderson, NV
★ 2021-10-27
A young man drifts across the country after being displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
Ham is a 19-year-old orphan whose last home was with his foster mother, Miss Pearl, and her son, Wally. Early in his time there, after he'd run away for a week, Miss Pearl gave him a pendant with a relic inside whose purpose, unbeknownst to Ham, was to bind him to their home. The fragment of bone in this pendant is said to contain the spirit of St. Martin de Porres, who died in 17th-century Peru, and it is this spirit who serves as the first-person narrator, keeping us close to Ham’s experiences. After fleeing New Orleans during the storm with only the clothes on his back and the pendant around his neck, Ham finds that he can't move on without learning what happened to Miss Pearl, leaving him doubly haunted. His travels take him from Alabama, where he stays with Deborah, a girl he meets when they both take shelter in a bar, to Atlanta, where he visits a friend from his adolescence named Mayfly. When Ham finds out that Deborah is pregnant with his child, he struggles to feel at home with her and her family, in his body, in his life. Martin’s spirit both watches and encourages Ham’s agitation, until he's compelled to return home. In this stunning debut, James brings together several beautifully drawn characters, each of whom is working to reconcile the tensions between belonging and exile, freedom and entrapment, while also trying to reckon with the ghosts (both literal and figurative) of the past. And yet, as Martin’s spirit comments regarding this struggle: “I know that we do not belong only to ourselves, that what loves us also seizes us.”
A mesmerizing story told by an impressive and captivating voice.
A Kirkus Most Anticipated Book of the Year
Goodreads, A Most Anticipated Debut Novel of 2022
"[A] profound debut novel . . . James captures the simple kindnesses of a cup of coffee or a shared cellphone as though they were religious acts. Where a more ponderous writer might lapse into a lengthy stream of consciousness, James uses short chapters to weave a story of fractured time and uncharted space into the fabric of life after Katrina, as Ham and others make sense of new homes and upended lives . . . This is a book of faith aching to be claimed, of a land that dares to be redeemed, of souls searching to be free, of all spirits looking for a home. It’s a metaphysical book deeply rooted in ancient legacies of subjugation . . . This is a deeply haunted novel that moves with calm and ruthless determination, like the eye of a hurricane." —Lauren LeBlanc, Los Angeles Times
"Compelling and unique" —Karla Strand, Ms. Magazine
"Chantal James’ lyrical debut is a deeply contemplative and transcendent study of relationships and human behavior . . . None But the Righteous emerges as a provocative and compelling examination of the human spirit, the ties that bind people to each other and the way people are shaped by the things that happen to them, far more than the choices they make." —Leah Tyler, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"None But The Righteous displays the traits of an essential great novel, both of its time and timeless in its embrace of humanity . . . At its heart, the narrative pulses with heedful care and curiosity about freedom versus control, contentment versus adversity—some of these forces are societal, some familial or strictly personal or idiosyncratic . . . In this novel’s world, we are at the mercy of our own impulses—and also the violence in our world . . . Are we capable of examining and reckoning with those impulses?" —Ron Slate, On the Seawall
"Its tension is succulent thanks, in part, to the rootlessness of its characters, who are always in motion. Forays into the fantastical come via magic potions, dangerous foods, and blended cultures . . . [a] fluid, musical novel.” —Foreword Reviews
"In this stunning debut, James brings together several beautifully drawn characters, each of whom is working to reconcile the tensions between belonging and exile, freedom and entrapment, while also trying to reckon with the ghosts (both literal and figurative) of the past . . . A mesmerizing story told by an impressive and captivating voice." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"This character-driven debut is both lyrical and haunting. It calls upon its characters to reconcile what it means to be free and to belong, as well as has them contend with ghostly possession. You will be taken on a captivating journey as you follow the young protagonist’s trek through the south." —Erica Ezeifedi, Book Riot
"Lyrical and creative . . . Written in atmospheric and imagery-rich prose, None But the Righteous examines where we choose to belong and why." —Booklist
"None but the Righteous is an homage to postcolonial and Southern literature yet a singularly incandescent marvel." —Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, author of The Revisioners and A Kind of Freedom
“At once spiritual and earthly, balancing with deft what is metaphysical and what is flesh, James’ None But the Righteous ensnares, haunts, and fulfills that ancient, human need for narrative in carefully chosen language. You’ll fall right into this world.” —Dantiel W. Moniz, Milk Blood Heat
"In the tradition of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, None But the Righteous is a gripping ghost story, a fevered dream of a young man’s quest for freedom and belonging in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Chantal James has written a gorgeous page-turner." —Devi S. Laskar, author of The Atlas of Reds and Blues and winner of the Crook's Corner Book Prize
"Masterfully lyrical and captivatingly atmospheric, None But the Righteous is a sweeping portrait of intersecting lives once buffeted by the winds of an apocalyptic hurricane, wandering toward the pull of belonging while simultaneously repulsed by it. Ham's journey to reclaim both his city and his own body is a story of epic proportions told by a fiercely talented writer. Chantal James is one to watch." —Zeyn Joukhadar, author of The Thirty Names of Night and The Map of Salt and Stars
