Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Three-Fifths | 2019 | John Vercher | Buy |
| 2 | After the Lights Go Out | 2022 | John Vercher | Buy |
| 3 | Devil Is Fine | 2024 | John Vercher | Buy |
John Vercher’s three standalone novels each take on questions of racial identity through different genre lenses. Three-Fifths (2019) is the story of Bobby, a biracial man who has been passing as white for years. When his Black best friend shows up after serving time in prison, Bobby’s carefully constructed life begins to crack. The novel reads as both a literary character study and a crime thriller.
After the Lights Go Out (2022) follows Xavier “Scarecrow” Wallace, a biracial MMA fighter whose career is threatened by cognitive decline. As he prepares for one last fight, he also has to confront his estranged father’s worsening dementia and the racial fault lines in his own family. Devil Is Fine (2024) is the most structurally ambitious of the three, weaving together the story of a modern-day academic with that of an enslaved man on a Southern plantation. All three books share Vercher’s direct, physical prose style and his refusal to offer easy answers about race and identity in America.