The Occidental Book of the Dead

"No one is having more fun with language than T. Geronimo Johnson. The way his mind works is endlessly entertaining, inviting us into a fantasia. Of men behaving badly in a world behaving worse." — Attica Locke, New York Times bestselling author of Bluebird, Bluebird

"T. Geronimo Johnson plays cultural criticism like it’s acid jazz." — Ron Charles, The Washington Post

From the PEN/Faulkner finalist and National Book Award longlisted author of Welcome to Braggsville comes an audacious and darkly funny literary crime masterpiece centered on a Black police officer in an Atlanta precinct whose carefully constructed alliance with whiteness begins to unravel after a highly publicized murder.

George Washington Jonson is determined to build a new life. After growing up in one of Atlanta’s poorest housing projects, he enlists in the U.S. Army and finds a measure of escape while serving overseas. When circumstances bring him back home, he joins the police force. It is 1992, and Jonson patrols the same streets where he was raised alongside his new partner—a questionable legacy cop and self-described “redneck” who takes Jonson under his wing.

After a decade on the job, Jonson has created a new existence in an affluent suburb with his white wife and stepson, though he continues policing his old neighborhood and training a new generation of hot-headed recruits. Then, during a routine patrol, a split-second confrontation with a white teenager turns violent. A single gunshot sets off a chain reaction of escalating lies.

As the carefully maintained veneer of Jonson’s life begins to fracture, the story divides into two contrasting versions of the American experience. Forced to confront the history that shaped him and the compromises demanded of a good man operating within a broken system, Jonson must reckon with the choices that brought him to this moment.

Employing a bold and inventive structure while spanning two turbulent decades, The Occidental Book of the Dead vividly captures the complexities of the American South. Written with Johnson’s trademark virtuosic dissonance, this propulsive novel explores corruption, conspiracy, and the deep divisions within a nation struggling with its own history.