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A Novel β A Split Narrative of Race, Police Corruption, and Moral Compromise in Atlanta
William Morrow
October 2026
On Sale: October 6, 2026
672 pages
ISBN: 0063330547
EAN: 9780063330542
Kindle: B0G6Z8PG3T
Hardcover / e-Book / audiobook
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Multicultural African-American
From the PEN/Faulkner finalist and National Book Award longlisted author of Welcome to Braggsville, comes this audacious and darkly funny literary crime masterpiece centered on a Black cop in an Atlanta precinct, whose façade of white alliance begins to crumble after a highly publicized murder George Washington Jonson is determined to forge a new life. After growing up in one of Atlanta’s poorest housing projects, he enlists in the U.S. Army and finds some relief serving abroad. When events lead him back home, he joins the police force. It’s 1992, and Jonson is patrolling the streets he grew up on alongside his new partner, a shady legacy cop and self‑described “redneck” who takes Jonson under his wing. After a decade on the job, Jonson has fashioned a new life in an affluent suburb with his white wife and stepson, though he’s still policing his old neighborhood, and now tasked with training hot‑headed rookie recruits. One night on patrol a split‑second confrontation with a white teenager takes a violent turn. That single gunshot sets into motion a series of escalating lies.
When the white‑washed veneer of Jonson’s life begins to crack, the story splits, presenting two contrasting versions of the American experience as he’s forced to confront the history that shaped him and the compromises required of a good man in a broken system. Employing a bold, inventive structure and spanning two fraught decades, vividly evoking the complexities of the South, and written with his trademark virtuosic dissonance, The Occidental Book of the Dead is a propulsive, pyrotechnic exploration of corruption and conspiracy in a nation divided.
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