Review by Booklist Review
James' lyrical and creative debut novel is narrated by a spirit trapped in a relic. Ham had to evacuate from New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. It's been a few months now, and he's trying to get back to see what of his old world is left. He stays with friends and acquaintances in Georgia and Alabama on his odyssey back home. As a young boy, Ham's foster mother, Miss Pearl, kept him from running away with a binding spell and a necklace containing the bones of a seventeenth-century Peruvian monk. The spirit of the monk controls Ham in moments when he does not want to be himself, which for Ham happens often. Beyond the ghost in the relic around his neck, Ham encounters many other ways that people bind and are bound to each other. His quest is that of a man searching for home and his own sense of self. Written in atmospheric and imagery-rich prose, None but the Righteous examines where we choose to belong and why.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
James debuts with the diffuse account of a young man's travails in the months after a hurricane devastates his hometown of New Orleans. Ham unknowingly carries a centuries-old spirit in a locket around his neck, that of Martin, a Dominican priest. It is through Martin's eyes that the reader sees Ham, whose speech and movements Martin controls. Like Martin, Ham finds people he can latch on to. First, Ham tracks down Mayfly, a transient he met as a child, in Atlanta. Next, he returns to Deborah, with whom he'd escaped a submerged New Orleans for rural Alabama. Her family represents an accepting, but monotonous, life to him, and he itches to return to New Orleans, resisting Martin's attempts to make him settle down with Deborah, which would make him easier for Martin to inhabit. James creates intricate character portraits, lush with details of family histories and pathologies, but the extended mood piece doesn't really amount to a story. Though the narrative lacks urgency, it effectively imparts the protagonist's feeling of trying to find his way to a home that no longer exists. Readers will have to be patient to get the payoff here. Agent: Stephanie Delman, Sanford J. Greenburger Assoc. (Jan.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
DEBUT Eleven-year-old Ham disrupted his foster mother's carefully ordered family routines. In an effort to control him, Miss Pearl gives him a locket that houses the relic and spirit of St. Martin de Porres. The spirit guides and controls Ham as he maneuvers through an awkward adolescence. Just as Ham begins to establish his adult life, Hurricane Katrina arrives. At the insistence of Deborah, a young woman he meets in the pre-storm chaos, he leaves New Orleans, a split-second decision that upends all that he knows. Dazed from his sudden escape, Ham initially recovers in Alabama at Deborah's home, then in Georgia at the home of his childhood friend Mayfly. Desperate to find out what happened to his foster mother, Ham makes his way back home, struggling with the priest's spirit every step of the way. VERDICT Fulbright Scholar James debuts with a languid character study that meanders through key memories and thoughts of the protagonist and the influential individuals surrounding him. The amorphous nature of James's tale may be challenging for readers who prefer a straightforward plot line.--Joy Gunn, Paseo Verde Lib., Henderson, NV
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A young man drifts across the country after being displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Ham is a 19-year-old orphan whose last home was with his foster mother, Miss Pearl, and her son, Wally. Early in his time there, after he'd run away for a week, Miss Pearl gave him a pendant with a relic inside whose purpose, unbeknownst to Ham, was to bind him to their home. The fragment of bone in this pendant is said to contain the spirit of St. Martin de Porres, who died in 17th-century Peru, and it is this spirit who serves as the first-person narrator, keeping us close to Ham's experiences. After fleeing New Orleans during the storm with only the clothes on his back and the pendant around his neck, Ham finds that he can't move on without learning what happened to Miss Pearl, leaving him doubly haunted. His travels take him from Alabama, where he stays with Deborah, a girl he meets when they both take shelter in a bar, to Atlanta, where he visits a friend from his adolescence named Mayfly. When Ham finds out that Deborah is pregnant with his child, he struggles to feel at home with her and her family, in his body, in his life. Martin's spirit both watches and encourages Ham's agitation, until he's compelled to return home. In this stunning debut, James brings together several beautifully drawn characters, each of whom is working to reconcile the tensions between belonging and exile, freedom and entrapment, while also trying to reckon with the ghosts (both literal and figurative) of the past. And yet, as Martin's spirit comments regarding this struggle: "I know that we do not belong only to ourselves, that what loves us also seizes us." A mesmerizing story told by an impressive and captivating voice. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
