Heathens: A Novel - Softcover

Named by Granta magazine as one of the best young American novelists of 1996, the author presents a satirical novel of suburban life featuring a midwestern, African-American family divided by religion and sex. Reprint.

he blues. His wife, LaDonna, is doing twenty-five days in the Shakopee Women's Detention Center for selling a house she didn't own--and putting a hex on the judge. LaDonna's marketing her own brand of facial cream called Madame LaDonna's Herbal Beauty Care Products. And Marcus' mother, who's got Mormons upstairs and heathens all around, sees her chance to liberate Marcus from that infernal woman at last.

Welcome to the world of the Gabriel family, three generations of curious, headstrong, and frighteningly independent-minded people living in a country called the Midwest. From Marcus' war with his unruly sixth-grade class to his voluptuous neighbor's pursuit of Jesus and the perfect sex life, the Gabriels and their friends are all going a little bit crazy. For with scheming, loving, eternally optimistic LaDonna doing time, the tribe is falling apart. And now the question is--how far can they slide in twenty-five little days?