Book Synopsis

Now with a brilliant new package, a re-issue of the debut novel by Percival Everett, New York Times bestselling author of National Book Award winner James.

It's the middle of the season and the third baseman for the Seattle Mariners, Craig Suder, is in the midst of an inescapable slump. On top of that, his wife has been keeping her distance and Suder can't shake the creeping fear that he might have inherited his mother's insanity. That's' when his team suggests he might enjoy a little break.

What's a man to do pack up the essentials--his record player, Charlie Parker's "Ornithology," and a saxophone--and hit the road? What ensues is the adventure of a lifetime. Haunted by his past as a young black boy in the South, and soon on the run from some less-than-savory individuals, Suder soon finds himself in curious company--including a little white girl and a pet elephant. Epic, thrilling, and utterly alive, Suder takes us on a whirlwind journey through the joys, the sorrows, and the madness that make up a life.

First published in 1983 by Louisianna State University Press, Suder marked the debut of an iconic American voice. Over the course of his five decade career, Everett has written over twenty five books and been shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize (for 2020's Telephone), twice longlisted for the Booker Prize, and the recipient of the 2024 National Book Award for the "genius" (The Atlantic) James, a brilliantly imagined retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told from the enslaved Jim's point of view. James was a #1 New York Times bestseller and is being developed into film by Stephen Spielberg.

Review Quotes

Praise for Percival Everett and Suder

"A mad work of comic genius, combining symbols and myths from ancients and moderns, white culture and black, juxtaposing heartbreaks with farce to make up a narrative that has never, never been told before."
--Los Angeles Times

"[A] marvelous first novel."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Very funny--sometimes excruciatingly so."
--Publishers Weekly

"God bless Percival Everett, whose dozens of idiosyncratic books demonstrate a majestic indifference to literary trends, the market, or his critics."
--The Wall Street Journal

"[Everett is a] prolific genius. . . . A literary jukebox."
--Elle

"Percival Everett [is] our current Great American Novelist. . . . Everett is one of the most, if not the most, interesting writers working today."
--Chicago Tribune

"If the unexpected always happens in Everett's individual novels, the variety across the work also astonishes."
--The Washington Post

"Percival Everett is a giant of American letters."
--Hernan Diaz, author of Trust

"One of our culture's preeminent novelists."
--Los Angeles Times

"Percival Everett is an audacious, beguiling American master, whose wild trajectory has reached astonishing highs in the past decade."
--Jonathan Lethem, author of Brooklyn Crime Novel

"[Everett] is a first-rate word wrangler."
--The Guardian

"Everett is one of the most unpredictable and original novelists working today."
--NPR

"Everett is a true American genius, a master artist."
--Oprah Daily

"Everett continues to be an endlessly inventive, genre-devouring creator of thoughtful, tender, provocative, and absolutely unpredictable literary wonders."
--Booklist

About the Author

PERCIVAL EVERETT is a Distinguished Professor of English at USC, and the author of New York Times bestseller and National Book Award winner James. His other recent books include Dr. No (finalist for the NBCC Award for Fiction and winner of the PEN/ Jean Stein Book Award), The Trees (finalist for the Booker Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction), Telephone (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), So Much Blue, Erasure, and I Am Not Sidney Poitier. He has received the NBCC Ivan Sandrof Life Achievement Award and The Windham Campbell Prize from Yale University. American Fiction, the feature film based on his novel Erasure, was released in 2023 and was awarded the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the writer Danzy Senna, and their children.