2021-10-13
An immortal woman delivers a love letter to Los Angeles.
In Deón's lauded debut, Grace(2016), Naomi fled 19th-century Alabama slavery to hide in a Georgia brothel; in this new book, the author again channels the voice of a Black teenager on the run. Sarah Shipley, aka Louise Willard, washes up in a Los Angeles alley naked of memory and nearly all her clothes. It is 1930. “We’re all on the verge of somebody else’s violence,” Sarah states on the opening page, speaking from the year 2102. It may take 20 pages for readers to find their bearings, but the dislocation is worth it. Deón dots her text with some superb phrasing and the knowledge that “Los Angeles has always been brown.” A social worker places Lou with a seemingly kind foster family in Boyle Heights, the kind of neighborhood that prompted W.E.B. Du Bois to declare that Black Angelenos were “without a doubt the most beautifully housed group of colored people in the United States.” Lou comes of age amid Prohibition and grows close to Esther Lee, an aspiring actress whose Chinese American family runs a legendary boxing gym—until Route 66 construction plows it under. Lou secures a desk in the basement of the Los Angeles Timesand a job writing features on dead folks, a juxtaposition that lets her riff on mortality even as she struggles to understand her place among the Immortals. Some of this is intriguing; other parts are a muddle. Deón has a weakness for aphorism, which can wobble into sermonettes, including the entirety of Chapter 9. She is on better footing in Mr. Lee’s boxing gym, where the details are vivid. There, Lou meets a fire captain from Alabama whose face she has been drawing compulsively. This novel is sexy even if its love story breaks no ground. More memorable is Metal Wally, a bigoted student from Lou’s high school who dogs her LA life. The scene at his funeral is riveting; so is a section on the catastrophic 1928 failure of the St. Francis dam. Deón, a criminal attorney, has a nose for corruption and a knack for cinematic scenes. “Passengers and beasts, it seems, we all are," she writes, "on our way to some other destination.”
The story of a strong woman in an unruly place is marred by a jumbled plot.
Nominee for the 2022 NAACP Image Award in Literature
Nominee for the 2022 Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards in Fiction
An Entropy Best Book of the Year
"A supple exploration of life in 1930s Los Angeles as well as a moving meditation on the Black American experience in the 20th century . . . Deón’s prose is beautiful, and the voice animating The Perishing is heartfelt . . . A vibrant, immersive world that’s worth spending time in, learning and remembering.“ —Amal El-Mohtar, The New York Times Book Review
"The Perishing is an odyssey through time, Los Angeles, and circuitous, lyrical storytelling . . . In Natashia Deón’s historical-science-fiction tale, reincarnation is a whimsical Trojan horse, inside of which we see how Black people inherit their histories. Deón offers close-up peeks at the City of Angels’s past life—Prohibition, early school integration, the St. Francis Dam collapse—while also imagining its future legacy. The writing is often spiky poetry; Deón’s descriptions of Lou’s surroundings, mirroring her amnesia, are filled with new wonder at an old world, destabilizing objects as ordinary as a pack of gum . . . In this myth-laden, cross-generational pilgrimage, Black lives move less like wind and more like water: shifting shape but retaining their essence as they cycle through and bear witness to an American city." —Nicole Acheampong, The Atlantic
“Pick this one up and I promise . . . you will not be able to put it down” —Shay Mitchell, Book of the Month
"Vivid and thrilling." —Annabel Gutterman, TIME
"The salient beauty of The Perishing is that [it] grapple[s] with what it is like to be inside bodies in extremis, on the edge of risk. Deón attend[s] to the body as a locus of power or its absence: how bodies relate to objects in space, how they feel, how they are given voice—or not—within a place." —Anita Fellicelli, Alta
"Is it sci-fi? Is it historical fiction? Mystery? Yes! And it’s unique, wondrous and brilliant." —Karla Strand, Ms.
"The Perishing . . . plays like its own genre—lyrical strangeness." —Christopher Borelli, Chicago Tribune
"Natashia Deón’s critically acclaimed debut novel, Grace, ushered in a brand-new literary talent whose fans have been waiting five long years to see what she would do next. It’s clear within the first few pages of her new novel, The Perishing, that the wait has been well worth it . . . The Perishing is a downright masterpiece. Welcome to the world of literary stardom, Natashia Deón." —Scott Neumyer, Shondaland
"Alongside authors who have portrayed Black Los Angeles with imaginative, complex soul—from Octavia Butler to Venita Blackburn—Deón has subverted the fantastic in the most satisfying of ways" —Jason Parham, WIRED
"The Perishing is a startling, luminous love letter to Los Angeles and one of the best books of 2021." —Adam Morgan, The A.V. Club
"History repeats itself on a personal level in this time-travel novel from Natashia Deón . . . The book is a fascinating and thrilling mystery, but for Deón, it’s also a commentary on the frustrating cycles of injustice that have yet to crack." —Rosa Cartagena, Bitch
"An intoxicating blend of sci-fi and historical fiction, The Perishing is a unique perspective on Depression-era life for a Black woman, time traveler or not." —Kirby Beaton, BuzzFeed
"This marriage of period lit and science fiction will plug the Lovecraft Country sized hole in your heart." —Keyaira Boone, Essence
"Haunting and beautiful." —Danielle Broadway, Black Girl Nerds
"From the Epic of Gilgamesh to Marvel’s Eternals, humans have always dreamt of living forever, and speculated on what it would be like to do so. And with so many examples in existence, it’s difficult to present readers with a fresh take on the sempiternal trope, but Natashia Deón’s second novel, The Perishing, does exactly that . . . Deón’s prose is gorgeous, lushly poetic and 'voice-y,' with a lot of appeal for fans of Octavia E. Butler and Carol Emshwiller . . . For a novel concerned with portraying timelessness, Deón anchors scenes in minute, present-moment detail. Readers who don’t surrender to the slow pace may get frustrated and skim, which is a pity, considering Deón's mastery of writing at the sentence level and the slow-burn of the mystery she unfolds." —Caren Gusoff, Locus Magazine
"The Perishing is full of language that is accomplishing multiple feats at once. One of which is being able to capture the visceral and emotional backdrop of a moment that translates throughout the book . . . As Lou learns more about how to exist in her body, and the many bodies of the lives that follow, she establishes a voice that, like Deón’s, is too powerful to ever be forgotten." —Aaron Coats, Chicago Review of Books
"A dark, gritty and slow-burning mystery . . . Deón’s writing is beautiful, with a rat-a-tat quality, like brutal poetry mixed with fierce prose." —Carole V. Bell, BookPage
"Tantalizing, intoxicating, and fantastical . . . Déon creates a haunting and atmospheric tale of immortality and mystery grounded in Black history and tradition." —Booklist (starred review)
