'A major new talent announces himself' Attica Locke, New York Times bestselling author of Guide Me Home and Bluebird, Bluebird

'A debut of enormous ambition that succeeds on every level. .. a page-turning, rollicking novel' Nathan Harris, New York Times bestselling author of The Sweetness of Water

The Devil first visits Yetunde aboard a slave ship heading to America. Her home burned to ash, she lies shackled in the belly of the ship with only her dead sister's spirit for company. Worse, she has a caught the eye of a white man. To survive the hell that awaits her, the Devil offers his protection and a piece of his supernatural power. In return, Yetunde makes an incredible sacrifice.

Their bargain extends far beyond Yetunde's mortal lifespan. Over the next 175 years, the Devil visits all her descendants in their darkest hour of need. There's Lucille, a conjure woman; Asa, the white-passing son of a slave; Louis and Virgil, a twentieth-century Cain and Abel; Cassandra, a girl who speaks to the dead; James, a father struggling to keep his family together; and many others. The Devil offers each of them his own version of salvation, all the while wondering: can he save himself, too?

Steeped in the spiritual traditions and oral history of the Black diaspora, The Devil Three Times is a baptism by fire and water, heralding a new voice in fiction.

"Ambitious, rollicking, heartbreaking, multi-vocal . . . In Fayne's witchy, earthy rural Black Southern genealogy of struggle, the past is as real as the now. The consequences of everything we have done and not done are ever-unfolding . . . The Devil Three Times demands to be read over and over" - Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"Fayne's imaginative narrative illustrates how the choices made in each generation ripple through the next" - Washington Post

"[An] ambitious debut . . . the prose is consistently crisp and suffused with a feeling of hauntedness. A complex meditation on Black history with a Mephistophelian twist" - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"Lively, irreverent . . . Fayne beautifully evokes each character's unique voice and essence in dialogue and description . . . Drawing broadly on spiritual traditions, folklore, and history, Fayne dramatically reimagines the origins of centuries of Black history and the quest for freedom in the Devil's unexpected backstory" - Booklist

"A monumental debut. Fayne is a voice to be reckoned with . . . A book that embodies Black America in the past, present, and future" - Debutiful

"A major new talent announces himself with The Devil Three Times. Rickey Fayne has written a structurally inventive novel that challenges nearly everything we've been taught about God and the Devil and the usefulness of Jesus's love for Black folks. This book is daring, and it challenged me at every turn. I was also deeply moved by its soulful belief in a universe in which we are all connected across generations" - Attica Locke, New York Times bestselling author of Guide Me Home and Bluebird, Bluebird

"A debut of enormous ambition that succeeds on every level. This is a page-turning, rollicking novel that is both an intimate family saga and an elegy for the American experience. Not since James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain has a debut conveyed Black spirituality with such passion, style, and brio. From the first page, I was spellbound, and was left devastated by the novel's end. This is what literature is all about" - Nathan Harris, New York Times bestselling author of The Sweetness of Water

"Rickey Fayne makes deep folklore and African American oral tradition feel alive, and thrilling. In a voice that is as humorous as it is wise, Fayne paints an unforgettable portrait of one family's journey through the peculiar landscape that is America" - Angela Flournoy, author of The Wilderness