The Gone Dead

April 8, 2019
Benz’s debut novel (after the collection The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead) is a rich, arresting exploration of racial injustice and the long shadows cast by family legacy. In the early aughts, 34-year-old Billie James inherits the former tenant’s shack in the Mississippi Delta where her father, a renowned black poet, returned to live after abandoning her and her mother—and where he later died under mysterious circumstances. Billie, four years old at the time of his death, has not been back to the South since. Intending to fix up the house for renters and stay only a week or two, she’s soon following evidence that indicates that her father’s death might not have been an accident, taking her into dangerous territory in search of the truth. Populated by a cast of delightfully untrustworthy characters, and told from multiple points of view, Billie’s quest to discover what really happened one night 30 years earlier is propulsive from the outset, culminating in a wrenching final scene. Just as discovering the truth of Billie’s father’s death is not enough to satisfy the novel’s characters, there are no easy answers for readers, who will be haunted by the lingering effects of injustice. A beautiful and devastating portrait of the modern South, this book will linger in the minds of readers.

April 15, 2019
"Who could breathe under the weight of a genius father who was supremely brilliant and made a mysterious tragic exit?" Billie James hopes she can in this debut novel. Billie comes from literary royalty, but you wouldn't know it from the humble shack in the Mississippi Delta that she's just inherited from her grandmother. She spent time there during her early years, and it's where her father, Clifton, a gifted though underappreciated African-American poet, died under mysterious circumstances when his daughter was 4. Now in her 30s, and feeling the weight of not quite living up to her father's standard, Billie returns to the Greendale, Mississippi, of her childhood and begins to seek answers to the questions surrounding her father's death. As she turns stones long undisturbed, she makes a curious discovery: She was present when her father died, and yet she has no memory of the event. The ingrained tribalism of Clifton James' relatives, friends, and lovers makes them reluctant--or only halfheartedly willing--to reveal the long-buried truth and see justice served. Their inability to provide straightforward answers propels Billie on a dangerous path. When she discovers an unpublished chapter among her father's things, her determination shifts into high gear, putting her life in danger. The legacies of slavery, racism, segregation, and classism imbue the novel, along with the relentless insularity of small-town life. And yet the reader's foothold into this world is tenuous, much like Billie's as she is welcomed and repelled at the same time. Where the novel shines is in dialogue. The music of the spoken word shows that Benz (The Man Who Shot out My Dead Eye, 2017) has a strong ear and appreciation for Southern culture that rings true. Unfortunately, though, the reader is only occasionally steeped in the world of the novel. The thirst for justice is difficult to make palpable, but Benz makes a valiant effort.

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April 1, 2019

Billie James's father was killed in an accident when she was only four years old, and she hasn't been back to their Mississippi Delta shack since. Finally returning, she hears talk that she went missing on the day he died. What really happened, and is she in danger? Benz won Best Book honors from the San Francisco Chronicle and Electric Literature for her story collection The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead; with a 100,000-copy first printing.