THE OCCIDENTAL BOOK OF THE DEAD: A (really long) Novel

THE OCCIDENTAL BOOK OF THE DEAD: A Novel
T. GERONIMO JOHNSON
William Morrow (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$16.99 ebook, preorder now for delivery 6 October 2026

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: From the PEN/Faulkner finalist and National Book Award longlisted author of Welcome to Braggsville, comes this long-awaited, visionary new novel centered on a Black cop in an Atlanta precinct, whose façade of white alliance begins to crumble after a highly publicized murder.

George Washington Jonson is determined to forge a new life. After growing up in one of Atlanta’s poorest housing projects, he enlists in the U.S. Army and finds some relief serving abroad. When events lead him back home, he joins the police force. It’s 1992, and Jonson is patrolling the streets he grew up on alongside his new partner, a shady legacy cop and self-described “redneck” who takes Jonson under his wing.

After a decade on the job, Jonson has fashioned a new life for himself in an affluent suburb with his white wife and stepson, though he’s still policing his old neighborhood, and now tasked with training hot-headed rookie recruits. One night on patrol a split-second confrontation with a white teenager takes a violent turn. That single gunshot sets into motion a series of escalating lies—all threatening to be exposed as investment in the case mounts to a fever pitch.

When the white-washed veneer of Jonson’s life begins to crack, the story splits, presenting two contrasting versions of the American experience as he’s forced to confront the history that shaped him and the compromises required of a good man in a broken system.

Employing a bold, inventive structure and spanning two fraught decades, vividly evoking the complexities of the South, and written with the same virtuosic dissonance and insight as his previously acclaimed novels, The Occidental Book of the Dead is a propulsive, pyrotechnic exploration of systems of corruption and conspiracy—and an epic, unflinching portrait of a nation divided.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Pay close attention to the format shift. Its tonal shift is obviously important; its timing might need some thought but it needs the effort to get the most out of it.

A very long read that, if you're at all like me, goes to some places so dark you will need some days off when certain sections are over.

What happens when ot's YOUR son/nephew/grandson, white people? Why does justice suddenly matter so much that millions get spent on intensive incestigations, careers are suddenly at stake, press conferences get held? I've never, in almost seventy years of life spent mainly in New York City and Texas...so among guns...had a gun pointed at me. Imagining it fills me with cold dread.

But that's all I do. I summon the image and play pretend because it's never happened to me, or to anyone I've ever known at all well. I'm not particularly unusual in this way.

I'm not Black. (Duh.) My Black friends and acquaintances are privileged, educated people. Yet I am sure we would get to gun violence faster checking in with them than with me.

Author Geronimo writes about the futility of expecting the privileged to see or to amend their access to privilege. It is a mug's game to think "ally" is meaningful and substantive label. I know this intimately from being among the QUILTBAG communities and seeing the ease with which people turn us into "them" really fast. It doesn't even need to be for a reason, there's no excuse required, you're suddenly, unexpectedly on the outside looking in.

And that, played out in a story about a man in authority, is a very powerful piece of literary ju jitsu. It is greatly to Author Geronimo's credit that he does not foreshadow things so heavily as to make them feel overly familiar when they occur. It takes considerable, and all too uncommon, levels of skill to achieve that device. It's a craft skill I wish was more widely distributed.

My criticism of this read is length. It can feel very much like we're living the story in real time. Considering it's a very weighty tale indeed, it's a big ask...let alone asking it twice in a row.