"Written in evocative prose with careful detail, this is a veracious portrayal of a decimated city. It moves at an exciting pace, the various plot threads braiding rapidly. Most poignant is the insight offered about those fighting to amend the damage. These characters are flawed and more appealing for it. Perhaps Hebert intends to suggest that this is true of the city itself. An expansive yet intimate tale of the efforts made to save a decaying Detroit." - Kirkus Reviews
"Hebert tells this story through the interactions of eleven major characters whose lives intersect in subtle and suspenseful ways. . . . [He] wonderfully brings out his ensemble’s human qualities, whether they’re fearful, compassionate, or tenacious." - Publishers Weekly
"Hebert’s powerful novel will produce chills. . . . Scrambling for viable options, Hebert’s current residents [of Detroit]—activists, planners, takers, opportunists, and optimists still living in a city that looks war-gutted—are undertaking to shake off the shroud of how-did-this-happen and discover renewed vigor. Hebert’s tenacious prose . . . drives the narrative and brings characters . . . to visceral life." - Booklist
"Ambitious, well-paced, observant—Angels of Detroit is a first-rate novel of flawed but admirable characters who want a brighter future in what one of them calls ‘the new Old West.’" - Shelf Awareness
"Written with vivid compassion, Hebert’s characters represent Detroit's many generations, races, and socioeconomic divisions. As their lives intersect, a multifaceted Detroit takes shape: a city to grieve, and a city just getting started." - Belt Magazine
"A humbler, more endearing bunch of rainbow-hued misfits never fumbled their broken-hearted way towards revolution than those we meet in Christopher Hebert’s Angels of Detroit—truly a novel of our moment, both in the way it stares unsentimentally at the real trouble we are in—a world of poisoned children and cities in ruins—and in the deep and detailed empathy it shows for characters of every class and provenance. Hebert gets Detroit right, in this beautifully made book: his careful drawing of its physical catastrophe locates the city at the exact boundary between gritty-real and surreal, between last hope and post-apocalyptic nightmare." - Jaimy Gordon, author of the National Book Award-winning LORD OF MISRULE
"Set in a city that’s either deteriorating beyond hope or rising from the ashes, Angels of Detroit pulls off the magic trick of all great fiction: it makes the world we live in now seem both wondrous and strange." - Adam Ross, author of MR. PEANUT
"Christopher Hebert’s prose is as incantatory as it is precise, summoning forth a city dreamlike in its strangeness but unmistakably grounded in living reality. Few contemporary writers invoke the secret landscapes of American cities this well. . . . An exciting addition to the new canon of brave contemporary novels devoted to our twenty-first century lives, its every page bearing witness to the dark, desperately digging for hope, the work of a fine novelist writing unflinching before all the good and the bad, the ugly and the ultimately beautiful." - Matt Bell, author of SCRAPPER
"Angels of Detroit is an unforgettable take on one of America’s great urban tragedies. Its ruins are real and devastating, crowded with magnificent characters, shot through with passion, alive with history, drama, and courage. I read this novel urgently, feeling wonder on every page." - Whitney Terrell, author of THE GOOD LIEUTENANT
"Hebert’s varied and vividly-drawn ensemble cast brings to life a portrait of Detroit so multifaceted that it is, really, an original literary vision of late-capitalist America. Damning, true, prophetic: Angels of Detroit is also compelling, driven by an authentic realism and intricate plotting that is —literally—explosive. A profoundly satisfying novel about vital issues driven by living characters—about whom I will be thinking for a long time." - Neil Gordon, author of THE COMPANY YOU KEEP
"So completely did I fall for the misfits and idealists that populate Angels of Detroit that more than once I found myself on Google Maps, seeking signs of their real life counterparts, infusing that beleaguered city with hope. Christopher Hebert's wondrous novel brims and bristles with the rarest of fictional qualities: raw humanity." - David Goodwillie, author of AMERICAN SUBVERSIVE
"A testament to the complexities of Detroit—as well as Hebert’s dedication to portraying the city with honesty and integrity . . . The book has garnered praise for its prose, but it is also rich with plot." - Detroit Free Press
02/15/2016
Winner of the 2013 Friends of American Writers Award, Hebert's The Boiling Season addressed issues of social concern in taut, evocative language. Here he tells the story of devastated Detroit through interlocking characters, from persevering activists to a great-grandmother tending her garden to an idealistic carpenter. Hebert is currently the Jack E. Reese Writer-in-Residence at the University of Tennessee Libraries.
2016-04-12
An ensemble novel set against the backdrop of a ruined and abandoned Detroit. Hebert's (The Boiling Season, 2012) sweeping tale follows the intersecting lives of a diverse cast of characters, each struggling in his or her own way to persevere. There's Dobbs, a dispassionate, insomniac college dropout who, looking to distance himself from his upbringing and align himself with "bottom-feeders" more suited for survival in a dying world, transports and harbors illegal aliens. There's a band of protesters, led by the bold and destructive McGee, whose attempts at dissent and demonstration fall far short of their expectations. There's Ruth Freeman, a powerful but jaded director of corporate communications at HSI—the remaining pillar of Detroit industry, producing everything from weapons and drones to toasters and fetal heart monitors—who to the protestors is a criminal and to her fellow HSI board members is a stubborn snag in their mission to desert the city. There's Darius, who is alternately loyal to HSI, where he works as a security guard, and aligned with the subversive movement; his dubious moral center is underlined by an affair with his teenage neighbor. There's Michael Boni, a lapsed carpenter living in his deceased grandmother's house, who dreams of demolishing Detroit's neglected buildings and growing flora in their place, an ambition inspired by the quiet garden work of his elderly neighbor, Constance. For Michael, "the lettuce was an opening salvo, a declaration of war." The most poignant and appealing of these characters are Constance and her great-granddaughter, Clementine. From nothing, with only sporadically helpful neighbors, Constance cultivates a lush crop in her backyard, opens a restaurant furnished with found goods, and is a taciturn, unapologetic force for community good. Written in evocative prose with careful detail, this is a veracious portrayal of a decimated city. It moves at an exciting pace, the various plot threads braiding rapidly. Most poignant is the insight offered about those fighting to amend the damage. These characters are flawed and more appealing for it. Perhaps Hebert intends to suggest that this is true of the city itself. An expansive yet intimate tale of the efforts made to save a decaying Detroit.
