Child and God

A lyrical, polyphonic debut about a brother and sister growing up in a Black Pentecostal Church in Detroit, exploring themes of revelation and concealment; desire and its sublimation; and the ultimate cost of belief from a major new literary voice.

Here is the perfect godly family: a stoic father, his dutiful wife, and their two children, a daughter and a son. On the surface, they are a shining example within their church—a beacon of God’s many promises. But the sister, older and more knowing than anyone suspects, quietly resists their religious context while the younger brother, not yet in middle school, appears destined for unwavering devotion—that is, if he can excise those parts of himself he fears God will not accept.

Told in tight, alternating narratives—Him, Her, and Them—Child and God captures both the intimacy of their individual selves and the fraught terrain of their shared world. What emerges is a haunting meditation on the American Black church—a testament to the beauty and terror of belief, the sanctity of family, and the profound psychological toll of devotion. At the novel’s heart is the child who is told he must be “trained in the way he should go,” and the perilous cost of such training on the soul. In the literary tradition of James Baldwin and Douglas Stuart, Child and God is a searing, transcendent treatment of faith, identity, class, and sexuality.