T. Geronimo Johnson's second novel is a satirical coming-of-age story narrated by D'aron Davenport, a white nineteen-year-old from tiny Braggsville, Georgia, who escapes to UC Berkeley and falls in with three friends — Louis, an aspiring "kung-fu comedian"; Candice, an earnest Iowan who claims Native ancestry; and Charlie, a Black Chicagoan — who christen themselves the "4 Little Indians." In an alternative history class D'aron mentions that Braggsville still stages an annual Civil War reenactment, rebranded "Patriot Days," and Candice proposes a "performative intervention": the friends will descend on the reenactment in makeshift slave costumes and stage a mock lynching. Johnson plays the campus comedy broadly — skewering academic jargon, liberal self-regard, Southern defensiveness, and social media alike — and then lets the prank turn devastating, forcing D'aron to reckon with what his friends, his hometown, and he himself actually understand about race. The novel was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence.
Author: T. Geronimo Johnson · Original publisher: William Morrow (New York), 2015