Amanishakhete’s sense of history and the sacredness of Africa powers this literary fantasy, as the story digs into the dawn of the slave trade, the founding of Baldwin, and how key “Towners,” facing a smallpox epidemic in the 17th century, forged a vicious Blood Covenant involving sacrifices every 17 years, leading to “increased hell on Earth in the coming centuries.” The material is heady and at times demanding, as twin daughters, one embodying good and the other evil, clash from the moment of conception until the fateful solstice blood moon of 1925, when only one can emerge victorious, either releasing or destroying the tortured soul of the Prince.

The novel pulses with pained and mythic imagery like the Hanging Tree (where Baldwin’s residents celebrated “the first African hung in early Alabama”), and there’s aching power in its central metaphor of Towners achieving immortality from “the blood of slain and deceased Africans.” For all the invented history and spiritual elements, including journeys into dark realms and appearances from Lucifer and Satan (or Satana), the narrative moves briskly, at least after some heady introductory material. Earthly scenes edge toward the unsettling–with blood and wombs, snakes and spirits and creatures like a clondike–or the hopeful, as Amanishakhete powerfully emphasizes love, community, and ancestral memory.

Takeaway: Literary fantasy of African myth, blood, and the secret history of an Alabama town.

Comparable Titles: Amos Tutola’s My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone.