Clay Cane is many things: journalist, historian, author, and host of The Clay Cane Show on SiriusXM. But he’s long hoped to add another title to that list: novelist.

Next year—on the heels of his 2024 nonfiction bestseller The Grift: The Downward Spiral of Black Republicans from the Party of Lincoln to the Cult of Trump—he’ll finally accomplish that goal when Dafina publishes Burn Down Master’s House, which was inspired by true stories of enslaved people who rose up and fought back against chattel slavery in the United States.

“I started writing Burn Down Master’s House 24 years ago,” Cane says from his office in Jersey City, N.J., which he’s called home since 1998. “I had just started at Rutgers, and my first class was Black studies with Dr. Zain Abdullah. He changed my life completely. I was activated and triggered. I became obsessed with what they called slave narratives back then. I was really moved by these stories of people writing their own stories, their own perspectives, and it really triggered me.”

He was also inspired by the historical fiction he was reading at the time—works by writers such as Arna Bontemps and Margaret Walker, as well as Uncle Tom's Children is by Richard Wright. “I learned so much from historical fiction,” Cane says. “I understood the politics and the policy better, I understood the underpinnings of slavery better, and I said, I want to do it this way.”

Cane says one book in particular, The Greatest Taboo, a 2001 essay collection edited by Delroy Constantine-Simms, really shifted the narrative for him. “It was about homosexuality in Black communities, and they talked about homosexuality in American chattel slavery,” he recalls. “There’s very little data around it, but I had to learn more. Hearing all of this from the perspective of the enslaved person, that just settled into me, and not to be too hyperbolic, but it almost felt like it was spiritually in me.”

Cane was raised, after his parents separated when he was a kid, in both small-town Washington State, where he says he faced “a lot of deep, ugly racism,” and big-city Philadelphia, where he “felt more safe” as a Black gay kid growing up in the ’80s. His father worked for the Philadelphia transit system and his mother was a waitress, and both were readers who pushed him in that direction, too.

“I would get books for Christmas,” Cane remembers. “In 10th grade, I read Roots. And my mom wouldn’t let me go see Malcolm X without reading the book first. Also, in Philadelphia, there’s a great Black radical tradition. That really resonated with me. So, I began to fuse my love of reading and writing with history at that point, and it all got to me through books, although, in school, they didn’t teach Black history at all.”

Meanwhile, Cane began hearing stories about his family history from his grandfather. “My family was enslaved in Goochland, Va., so when I came across these hidden histories in my first year of college, it all felt incredibly connected,” he says. “It’s like these stories have always been with me.”

After high school, Cane spent a semester at Penn State but quit and took a job in New York City at an LGBTQ+ community center. When he was 24, his boss at the center suggested he finish his degree. Cane did just that, earning a BA in African American studies and English from Rutgers in 2009. While still at Rutgers, Cane began working as a journalist, writing for CNN, Men’s Fitness, Vibe, and other publications, and eventually landing a gig as an editor at BET. From there, he hasn’t looked back.

He helped edit For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Still Not Enough (2012) and contributed a piece to Where Did Our Love Go: Love and Relationships in the African-American Community (2013). He went on to produce, write, and direct the BET documentary Holler If You Hear Me: Black and Gay in the Church (2015)—which earned a GLAAD Media Award nomination and was screened at the White House—and wrote Live Through This: Surviving the Intersections of Sexuality, God, and Race (2017).

“All of my work is very personal to me,” Cane says. “There’s always a connection there, a curiosity. And so much of the time, I’m just trying to connect the dots, to figure out how we got here. With everything happening politically now, I wanted to see where we were coming from, to try to make it make sense.”

While promoting Live Through This, Cane appeared on the Karen Hunter Show on SiriusXM. The two had a good rapport, and by 2018 he had his own hour-long daily show on the network. “Karen advocated for me,” he says. “And now I have three hours, from noon to three, Monday to Friday.”

His radio work inspired him to explore the history of Black Republicans, which eventually led to The Grift. “It was all about, How did we get here? How did this happen? It’s all history repeating itself. I did a nine-minute spot on The View, and it changed the whole trajectory of the book and my life.”

With the success of The Grift, readers might expect another nonfiction deep dive from Cane. But the author decided to shake things up and finally finish his novel. Burn Down Master’s House is an interconnected series of stories that shines light on narratives of enslaved people whose acts of rebellion have been erased from history—from the deft cook Josephine, who poisoned her master’s family with a delectable final supper, to Luke and Henri, whose love story was an act of rebellion in and of itself.

“There’s a lot of research in it, but I had unearthed these stories that had been buried,” Cane says. “Some are more fictionalized than others, but these are real people who we haven’t heard from. They just vanished from the historical record. I wanted to raise their voices. A remembrance, yes, but also an uprising. And now it’s finally happening.”

The book is unflinchingly brutal and visceral in its depictions of the horrific physical and psychological violence enslaved people faced. It’s also equally—and purposefully—brutal in its portrayal of the violence of rebellion. “I wanted to remind people what slavery actually looked like,” Cane says. “Nina Simone once said, ‘Don’t put nothing in if you can’t feel it.’ When I was writing it, I was thinking of my ancestors as well. How could I make sure they were properly centered, and that you could feel them? So, all the main characters in the book are real people, and all the secondary characters are named after my ancestors who were enslaved.”

Burn Down Master’s House also has its share of love and joy, highlighting the connections between enslaved people and the networks and families they created—things that helped them survive and rise up. “That was really important to me,” Cane explains. “To make it as raw, as sad, but also as joyful and victorious. To show the humanity that gets erased.”

And while the book is steadfastly historical fiction, Burn Down Master’s House also feel timely given the current political landscape. “For me, there are these moments, now, today, ringing clear as a bell,” Cane says. “Like Kanye West saying slavery was a choice. Ron DeSantis saying there are personal benefits to slavery. Nikki Haley saying the Civil War wasn’t about slavery. The book bans. The erasure.”

For Cane, Burn Down Master’s House is a call to action. “I’m going to tell a story that has not been told,” he says. “I’m going to call on everything that is in me—from me being a little boy in Philadelphia to reading Malcolm X and amazing Black radical literature, my days at Rutgers University, working at BET, Holler If You Hear Me, Live Through This, and The Grift—and I’m gonna burn this down. I’m going to ask, Are these structures serving us? And if not, let’s burn it all down.”

Sona Charaipotra is a journalist, editor, and the author of six books.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly referenced Uncle Tom's Cabin. The book Cane mentioned was Uncle Tom's Children by Richard Wright.