Overview

Archie ""God"" Johnson-so known for his flowing white hair, voluminous beard, and larger-than-life persona-is a veteran Atlanta journalist of Nigerian and Scots-Irish descent. When his racist White grandfather dies and leaves him a dilapidated Victorian house in the mostly Black neighborhood-a final curse from beyond the grave-Johnson moves to Sweetberry Park. As it happens, his life will never be the same. Distraught after a personal tragedy and still bleary from a long drug binge he used to cope, Johnson pulls himself together and rebuilds the Victorian, finds acceptance among his new neighbors, and attempts to pick up the shards of his newsgathering career. Meanwhile, his newly beloved Sweetberry Park is threatened to its very core-the target of greedy, deceptive developers who want to knock down and gentrify the historic neighborhood where civil rights hero Martin Luther King had been looked after as a child. Just as tensions reach a boiling point, police report that a deranged employee at the famed Atlanta Memorial Zoo has unleashed seventeen of the world's deadliest snakes into the leafy urban enclave. The entire city panics, unleashing chaos, an accidental shooting, and an unjust incarceration. With the help of a reclusive former blues songstress and a zany cast of old friends and millennial newcomers, Johnson attempts to save the neighborhood that saved him-with hilarious, and rather dubious, results.

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9781958861523

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Reviews

Praise for Josh Green's Secrets of Ash, winner, literary fiction, IndieReader Discovery Awards ""A fabulous book... These are great characters."" -NPR ""It's a propulsive suspense novel, with enough twists and turns to keep you reading until dawn."" -Atlanta ""A lyrical meditation on brotherhood and trauma. Green has a great observational eye and a talent for an unusual turn of phrase."" -Kirkus Reviews ""A compelling story of two brothers... whose fragile relationship is put to the ultimate test in the North Georgia mountains."" -Atlanta-Journal Constitution ""[A] finely written, intense, and powerful novel... Green unfolds [this] story with harrowing density and a raw-edged intimacy that is brutally compelling and deeply moving."" -Indie Reader Green was a 2024 Georgia Author of the Year nominee

Author Information

Josh Green is an award-winning journalist, fiction author, and editor whose work has appeared in Atlanta, Garden & Gun, Indianapolis Monthly, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Los Angeles Review, The Baltimore Review, and several anthologies. His first collection of short stories, Dirtyville Rhapsodies, was hailed by Men's Health as a ""Best Book for the Beach"" and was named a top 10 book of the year by Atlanta. His first novel, Secrets of Ash, garnered a number of accolades, including the Indie Reader Discovery Award for literary fiction and a runner-up placement at the Hollywood Book Festival. He lives in Atlanta with his wife and two daughters. By day, he covers the wild world of Atlanta development and real estate.

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