The Blue Is Where God Lives A NOVEL BY SHARON SOCHIL WASHINGTON
A powerful work of Afro–magic realism that interrogates the legacy of slavery and roots of poverty, witnesses the beauty and power in survival, and asks whether belief, magic, and intention can forge new realities
RIGHTS: World English ex. BCOM (Exclusive) + OM (Non-Exclusive) SELLING POINTS TRENDING CATEGORY: There is a strong appetite in the market for magic realism centered on the Black experience. AUDIENCE: For readers of Helen Oyeyemi, Yaa Gyasi, Jacqueline Woodson, Octavia Butler, and Toni Morrison’s Beloved. ABRAMS SUCCESS:The Blue Is Where God Lives offers an opportunity for Abrams to build on the success of the Megascope list in adult fiction.
SPECIFICATIONS * 288 pages * WIDTH: 5 1/2" - 140mm * HEIGHT: 8 1/4" - 206mm * Hardcover with jacket PUB MONTH: APRIL FICTION ISBN 978-1-4197-6710-4 US $27.00 CAN $34.00
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CARTON QTY: 28 ebook ISBN 978-1-64700-964-9 Blue’s daughter, Tsitra, is dying a horrific death. Thousands of miles away, Blue feels time slowing and hears voices, followed by an 18–month stillness. More than a century before, Blue’s grandparents, Amanda and Palmer, attend a salon party in New Orleans. It’s a veritable array of who’s–who within pre–Civil War social circles. Conversations get heated quickly as Ismay, the hostess who hails from French royalty, antagonizes Palmer, a landowner whose parents had been sold into American slavery and who’s there to seek revenge, and Amanda, a shapeshifter and puzzlemaker who had been enslaved until this very gathering. At this party, Amanda learns of a plot that will doom a line of her—and Palmer’s—family to poverty. She devises her own counter–plot to undo the damage. Meanwhile, Blue comes out of her stillness, broke and devoid of inspiration. In profound grief and consumed by guilt, Blue travels to The Ranch where the voices grow louder and she has visions of two women from the distant past. As time collapses and Blue and Amanda meet in the space of possibility, Blue feels the spark of a power and creative energy she has only glimpsed. A novel of invention but grounded in the real, The Blue Is Where God Lives is a dual– timeline, time–bending novel of undeniable beauty, magic, and possibility. Sharon Sochil Washington, a cultural anthropologist and creator of White Space, a newsletter on Substack that explores the meaning between the words we use, has written for the Dallas Times Herald, New York Newsday, and the Akron Beacon Journal. She received degrees from Columbia University and The New School in New York City, and speaks regularly at universities and conferences on issues of social justice, race, economic insecurity, education, and media influences. The Blue Is Where God Lives is her debut novel. She lives in Houston.
THE OVERLOOK PRESS
SPRING 2023
37
