Jones's debut novel, published 5 January 2021 and a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction, is set on a Mississippi cotton plantation its enslaved people call Empty. Samuel and Isaiah, two young men assigned to the barn, sustain a loving union that the community has long quietly accommodated. That refuge is threatened when Amos, an older enslaved man seeking favour and protection, begins preaching the owner's gospel and recasting the men's love as sin, and when the owner's plan to breed enslaved children makes their bond an economic offence as well. Told in rotating voices — enslaved women, ancestors in Africa, the owner and his household — the novel joins a lyrical love story to an account of how religion, violence, and memory were turned inside a slaveholding world.
Author: Robert Jones, Jr. · Original publisher: G. P. Putnam's Sons (New York), 2021
