Two-Step Devil

"Jamie Quatro is a writer of sinuous, muscular power and grace. Two-Step Devil is a starkly gorgeous story of God and loss and art and love, and her best book yet." --Lauren Groff

From a New York Times Notable "writer of great originality"--comes a bold novel about love, faith and two societal outsiders whose lives converge in the contemporary American South

The "fearless" (New Yorker) and "distinctive" (San Francisco Chronicle) author of I Want to Show You More and Fire Sermon--whose recently published stories in The New Yorker and The Paris Review have brought her new attention--is known for her sharp, seductive prose and masterful exploration of the divine and the carnal in daily life. In Two-Step Devil, Quatro delivers a striking and formally inventive story of the unlikely relationship between two strangers on the margins of society and the shadowy forces that threaten their futures.

It's 2014 in Lookout Mountain, Alabama, where the Prophet--a 70-year-old man who paints his visions--lives off the grid in a cabin near the Georgia border. While scrounging for materials at the local dump, the Prophet sees a car pull up to an abandoned gas station. In the back seat is a teenage girl with zip ties on her wrists, a girl he realizes he must rescue from her current life. Her name is Michael and the Prophet feels certain that she is his Big Fish, a messenger preordained by God to take his collection of end-times warnings to the White House.