Two-Step Devil - by Jamie Quatro (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

WINNER OF THE WILLIE MORRIS AWARD FOR SOUTHERN WRITING - FICTION

"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 new novel about love, faith and two societal outsiders whose lives converge in the contemporary American South

The "fearless" (New Yorker) 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.

In 2014, in Lookout Mountain, Alabama, the Prophet--a seventy-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 scrapyard, 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 a messenger sent by God to take his end-time warnings to the White House. Michael finds herself in the Prophet's remote, art-filled cabin, and as their uncertain dynamic evolves into tender friendship, she is offered a surprising opportunity to escape her past--and perhaps change her future.

Moving through the worlds of the Prophet, the girl, and a beguiling devil figure who dances in the corner of their lives, Two-Step Devil is a propulsive, philosophical examination of fate and faith that dares to ask what salvation, if any, can be found in our modern world.

Review Quotes

Praise for Two-Step Devil

Winner of the Willie Morris Award for Southern Writing - Fiction
Finalist for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize
An American Library Association Notable Book of the Year
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
A Best Book of the Year from The Paris Review and the Atlanta Journal Constitution
A Most Anticipated Book of 2024 from Literary Hub

"Just as the Prophet makes art out of detritus, Quatro alchemizes gloomy subject matter--sexual abuse, terminal disease, mental illness, poverty, suicide and American decay--into transcendent beauty . . . Quatro writes with the musicality and command of a mystic poet. Her sentences are also propulsive; the novel is a page-turner that leaves readers feeling deeply invested in the fates of the Prophet and Michael, individually and together . . . Theologically avant-garde and emotionally supple, Two-Step Devil is a Southern Gothic novel for fans of Denis Johnson, Frank Stanford and Wendell Berry, infused with the genre's requisite imagery of 'thick blankets of kudzu' vines and smells of 'blood, grease and sweat.' And, like her forebears, Quatro wrestles with what it might look like to find and embrace a living faith in the modern world." -- Melissa Broder, New York Times

"Two-Step Devil is in part an unusual father-daughter story, as Ms. Quatro embroiders a fragile and very sweet relationship between the outcasts . . . Intimately evoked . . . Ms. Quatro is a rare novelist for whom a religious belief in good and evil is not merely a plot device but a genuine guide to describing reality." -- Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

"In Jamie Quatro's fiction, a person is a burning thing: a voracious creature, hot with emotional, sexual and spiritual needs; prey to the squalid demands of embodied existence. Surely it's my imagination, but when I read Quatro--whether her story collection, I Want to Show You More (2013), her debut novel, Fire Sermon (2018), or her new book, the novel Two-Step Devil--I can't shake the sense that the pages feel warm to the touch. I see, in my mind's eye, her sentences threaded with muscle and sinew, letters glistening with sweat and blood . . . Across Quatro's oeuvre, there is no forgetting that selfhood is material: pulp and tissue and cuts . . . If Quatro has written a song for the frail fleshsack, she has, too, intimated humanity's cowardice in storytelling, the entwined 'horrific and beautiful' realities we balk at, and in desperate self-preservation, refuse to witness." -- Rachel Verona Cote, Washington Post

"Utterly brilliant and BOLD . . . [Quatro's] at her best in her latest Southern Gothic masterpiece." -- Bradley Sides, Electric Literature

"I've long thought Lookout Mountain would be an ideal setting for a sharp-edged, tangy novel, layered with the region's mysteries, and Jamie Quatro's Two-Step Devil delivers the goods . . . In her previous work Quatro has dramatized the skirmishing desires of body and soul, and she continues to plumb those themes here. There are faint echoes of Cormac McCarthy and Dennis Covington's Salvation on Sand Mountain. But like the Prophet's singular visions, her literary meditations are hers and hers alone: Two-Step Devil quickens suspense right through to the last page, her sentences taut yet beautifully made, her political content subtle, her compassion resonant." -- Hamilton Cain, Chapter 16

"Two-Step Devil is not only a darkly humorous and insightful novel, but a dramatic tragedy. We are presented with brightness and shadow and must turn from one to face the other." -- Malavika Praseed, Chicago Review of Books

"Jamie Quatro's Two-Step Devil is the rare contemporary work of fiction that takes the Deep South, with its essentially biblical figures of thought and speech, as seriously as the region should be taken . . . It is a prophetic book about the recent past and I have not read anything like it for a long time." -- Alec Niedenthal, The Paris Review

"Brilliantly paced and exquisitely detailed, this striking novel takes on such weighty themes as faith, humanity, and frailty without a touch of melodrama . . . A spectacular masterpiece." -- Booklist, starred review

"Quatro reckons with faith and the nature of evil in her daring and disturbing latest . . . It's hard to turn away from Quatro's electrifying vision." -- Publishers Weekly

"Two-Step Devil is a bold interrogation--even a condemnation--of rigid adherence to Christian rules . . . Quatro's prose ranks among the best Southern writing . . . Quatro excels at getting the hairs on your arms to stand on end, if not through narrative suspense, then through the radical nature of her narrative aim . . . Without question, Quatro is a pioneering writer for a new South, our patron saint of Southern discomfort." -- Cat Acree, BookPage

"Two-Step Devil is powerful in a manner that balances extremes--quiet moments, horrific violence, heartbreak, joy, self-discovery and fate. Both Winston and Michael are very finely drawn and totally unforgettable, set in a tale that is timely and timeless . . . Quatro's book is emotionally difficult, incredibly compelling and always beautiful. She has penned a novel of dark realism and dreamy insight, struggle and possibility." -- Sarah Rachel Egelman, Bookreporter

"In 2014, a visionary 70-year-old man develops a bond with a captive teenage girl that could change both their destinies . . . By alternating between perspectives and pushing the novel's formal boundaries, Quatro daringly explores the evils and mercies, large and small, that steer the courses of human lives. A searing and innovative allegory for our turbulent times." -- Kirkus Reviews

"A gripping tale that plays with form as much as point-of-view to deliver an enrapturing story. This blistering yet tender work of speculative fiction does not seek to condemn, but instead expands the conversation into the dark crevices where religious zealotry and mental health meet the perceptions of good and evil." -- Leah Tyler, Atlantic Journal Constitution

"Of the 54 titles I did read this year, the standout (of books published in 2024) was Two-Step Devil by Jamie Quatro. It's written from the viewpoints of three different characters (including one dying man who has ecstatic visions and one section formatted as a play, with the Devil of the title as the main character) and it has a vein of such sadness in it that it's sometimes hard to read, but once read, not forgotten."--Jill Wilson, Winnipeg Free Press

"Quatro's theological seriousness is convincing because she imbeds it in so much lyricism--and because it is never cheap . . . Against oceanic feelings and collective creeds, literary fiction pitches specific encounter, particular hope, embodied grace. In three books that feel both fearless and forgiving, Jamie Quatro has made religious belief live because she let religious belief struggle. In doing so, she put it all together." -- Todd Shy, Comment Magazine

"Two-Step Devil is an electrifying, ambitious work . . . This is a Southern tale, thrumming with the sounds of end-times Pentecostal preaching and 'buzz-saw cicadas.'" -- Ezra Craker, Sojourners

"This powerful new novel makes clear: [Quatro] is a major Southern writer with some very new ideas on the old themes . . . I was reminded of the prose rhythms of Cormac McCarthy and his Appalachian setting. Many readers will recognize the themes stressed by Flannery O'Connor. Quatro here, like O'Connor, takes seriously the power of Southern faith and evil."-- Don Noble, Tuscaloosa News

"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, author of The Vaster Wilds

"Reading this novel is like holding on to a live wire. Jamie Quatro is the real thing. The music of these sentences lights my hair on fire." -- Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness

"In this spellbinding story of good and evil, revelation and madness, Jamie Quatro ponders all the ways in which innocence and vulnerability can be exploited in a culture that deliberately turns from human suffering. Beautiful and brave and brilliant, shot through with mystery and love, Two-Step Devil is a novel that only Jamie Quatro could have written -- and only, I suspect, with an angel peering over her shoulder." -- Margaret Renkl, author of The Comfort of Crows

"Jamie Quatro's Two-Step Devil compelled me with almost supernatural force. I could not turn away. It's a book that wrestles with the biggest questions about sin and salvation, violation and agency--striding fearlessly into narrative and political terrain almost always treated with knee-jerk, agenda-driven simplicity--but the pulse at the core of this breathtaking novel is unequivocally human, tender and alive--formally daring and utterly riveting." -- Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters

"Glorious, rich, mad, wonderful, daring and epic in its scope, Two-Step Devil is simply thrilling to read." -- Samantha Harvey, author of Orbital

"I am in awe of Jamie Quatro's genius tonal calibrations and miraculous conjurations, her firm and delicate grasp of her characters' mysterious natures and overlapping struggles, their doubt-raddled, faithfully beating hearts. I was so moved by the Prophet's thorny goodness and Michael's strong life-wish. I found Two-Step Devil wickedly funny, endlessly surprising, and sublime." -- Karen Russell, author of Sleep Donation

"Jamie Quatro is one of the finest, and most fearless, American writers currently working. Her new novel, Two-Step Devil, is, among other things, an intense exploration of the Christian faith, a deeply empathetic portrait of a weirdo, and a peerlessly innovative modern-day theodicy. I've never read anything like it. I suspect no one has." -- Tom Bissell, author of Creative Types

"The bold, ingenious, impassioned Two-Step Devil takes risks--tonally, formally and theologically--that would terrify a less masterly writer than Jamie Quatro. Her unforgettable characters, her meticulous observation of backwoods folklife and her wide-ranging intellect come together to create a novel that's a wild and rich entertainment, a profound interrogation of God's ways to Man, and--perhaps most daring of all--a story of simple human compassion." -- David Gates, author of A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me

"The characters in Jamie Quatro's Two-Step Devil will surely join the pantheon of Hazel Motes, Temple Drake, and Howard Finster. They are their own peculiar theological texts, defying doctrinal consistency--and thank God for that." -- Charles Marsh, author of Evangelical Anxiety

Praise for Fire Sermon

"Fantastic . . . Erotic, spiritual, poetic." -- New York Times

"Startingly original . . . Quatro makes us feel the absolute necessity of desire." -- Atlantic

Praise for I Want to Show You More

"Remarkable . . . [these stories] move between carnality and spirit like some franker, modernized Flannery O'Connor." -- The New Yorker

About the Author

Jamie Quatro is the New York Times Notable author of I Want to Show You More, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award and the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize, and Fire Sermon, a Book of the Year for the Economist, San Francisco Chronicle, LitHub, Bloomberg, and the Times Literary Supplement. Quatro's fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, the New York Review of Books and Ploughshares. She is the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, and Maison Dora Maar, and teaches in the Sewanee School of Letters MFA program. Quatro lives with her family in Chattanooga, Tennessee.