No Man Came

No Man Came is the short story of a woman faced with a terrible choice. Inheriting love, pain, and a haunting warning from her Mammy, she grows into a fateful relationship with herself and others, especially her relationship with men. She begins her story in a thick vernacular voice, a voice as rich and deep as the soil of her cultural roots. Naked, raw, and urgent, No Man Came bleeds out its words with a surgical intensity that pierces the reader's emotional and spiritual womb. The peril and dire desperation this woman endures stick like summer cotton on the sharp seed hull. No Man Came is the story of a woman who waits. And waits. Until she can wait no longer. Finally, she chooses.

Written when Jaiya John was 23, No Man Came is a rare taste of his earliest work, revealing the nascency of a mystic storyteller who seems inhabited by endless souls.