Wells Without Water

The author of Sky Full of Elephants returns with an evocative, harrowing novel about the bonds of community and the power of redemption, as the disillusioned son of a preacher returns home and uncovers a supernatural force taking hold.

When a sweet, unassuming fifteen-year-old walks into the local police station attempting to kill everyone inside, Carmichael Franklin, a social justice advocate and legal investigator whose hope for a better world is masked by a deep layer of cynicism, is called home to Loblolly Grove to uncover what happened.

Carm returns to find his community crumbling. While the underfunded “Lo” has always had its struggles, its residents were once as close as family. In a towering apartment complex, Carm discovers that its caretaker, Ma Esther, has been murdered, and a rising tension—along with strange outbreaks of violence—appears to have infected everyone. Carm’s brother, Everett, who has followed in their father’s footsteps and is now the Bishop, brings Carm to meet a young girl he believes is possessed, setting off an action-packed chain of events that transports Carm across time.

Wells Without Water is an incendiary, poetic, horrifying, and deeply felt journey through the lives and loves of the Lo. Cebo Campbell delivers a literary horror novel with the heat and rhythm of a Black sermon and the surreal, myth-soaked atmosphere of Southern Gothic at its most hallucinatory.

As the Lo teeters between decay and revolution, Carmichael must confront a spiritual evil that has haunted humanity from its earliest beginnings. Wells Without Water explores the magical roots of Nat Turner’s rebellion, the power of religion when placed in the wrong hands, and the cosmic horror of slavery itself.