Red Now and Laters

Set in Houston’s South Park neighborhood, Guillory’s first novel is a no-holds-barred, yet ultimately haunting (in all senses of the word), account of growing up poor, black, Creole, Catholic, smart, and smart-alecky, in an urban ghetto beset by poverty but rich in food, music, language, religion, and connections to the dark side of the spirit world. The novel opens during Houston’s 1977 floods, as four-year-old Ti John’s father carries him through the mud. Strong, scarred, secretive, Ti John’s father is a rodeo cowboy and healer who uses otherworldly powers. Young Ti John shows signs of inheriting his father’s gift when the smell of smoke announces to him the ghostly presence of ancestor Nonc Sonnier, whose unfortunate history is told in a flashback. Despite Ti John’s mother’s insistence on a Catholic education, he also inherits his father’s close acquaintance with trouble. Guillory includes footnotes, his family tree, and passages defining the relationship between the bayou and the affluent, and between those defeated by racism and poverty and those with a chance. Secondary characters, like Father Jerome; brutal scenes, like a woman losing her baby in the storm; and razor-sharp, brazenly clever commentary, provide abrasive humor. Guillory’s story provides insights—simultaneously provocative, angry, and compassionate—into one of America’s neglected communities. (Mar.)