Trouble the Saints
core novel 2020 Trouble the Saints
Record
| First published | 2020 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.35 (2,055 ratings, collected 2026-09-15) |
| Page count | 352 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9781250175342 |
| Internal chronology | 1 |
Synopsis
Trouble the Saints is set in an alternate 1940s New York City and follows Phyllis LeBlanc, a light-skinned woman of color passing among the city's white elite while working as an assassin for a mob boss. Phyllis's supernatural gift lets her throw knives with uncanny, deadly precision, a talent tied to a set of otherworldly abilities that run through her family and community and that the novel treats as a kind of inherited, racially coded magic. When she is asked to take on one final job before trying to leave that life behind, Phyllis finds herself forced to confront uncomfortable truths about her past, her complicity in the violence she has committed, and the cost her supernatural gift has exacted on the people closest to her, including her former lover, a jazz pianist with his own uneasy relationship to her world.
Where it sits
- Universe: Trouble the Saints
- Series: Trouble the Saints core; position 1 of 1 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Alaya Dawn Johnson
Awards (verified)
- World Fantasy Award (Best Novel), 2021: won
Notes
- From the series record (Trouble the Saints): Standalone novel; a 1930s New York noir blending gangster politics with a mystical, uncanny gift for violence passed down through hands. Alaya Dawn Johnson's first universe in this canon.
Sources
← Trouble the Saints dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.