Seraphim
On behalf of: Kathy Robbins - The Robbins Office, Inc.
From a former public defender, a gritty and thrilling interrogation of crime, violence, and the limits of justice in New Orleans during the chaotic years after Hurricane Katrina…
A 16-year-old confesses to the murder of a local celebrity—a hero of New Orleans’ shaky post-storm recovery. The boy’s father, doing life in prison on the installment plan for a series of minor offenses, will do anything to save him. And Ben Alder, a legal carpetbagger who has drifted down to New Orleans, winds up defending them both.
Ben and his partner, Boris, are public defenders taking on cases of children being tried as adults: one is a former corporate attorney, the other is a former rabbinical seminary student, both are obsessed with redeeming their case history of failures—even if that means destroying evidence, getting shot at, lying to the court and to each other. As Ben spins a multi-layered mystery around an inexplicable crime that everyone thought was solved, he confronts his own legacy of loss and faith. When the novel hurtles towards its tragic, redemptive conclusion, Ben finds himself an onlooker and a perpetrator where he thought he was the hero.
A riveting and propulsive story about loyalty and grief, Seraphim is also an unflinching cross-examination of a broken legal system; a heartbreaking portrait of a beautiful, lost city, filled with children who kill and are killed; and a discomforting reflection on privilege, prejudice, and power.
Reviews
“A beautiful, heartfelt lament for the lost and those who must live with loss; an authentic mournful blues for the victims and the perps and everyone caught between; a broken hallelujah that rings true and echoes long after the final, triumphant note.” — Greg Galloway, author of Just Thieves
“There are few starker examples of the disparity between America’s self-image and the actuality of its streets than New Orleans, where grand mansions bloom alongside abject poverty. Much the same is true of America’s legal system. Joshua Perry brings both city and system–accurately, heartbreakingly–to the pages of Seraphim.” — James Sallis, author of Drive
“Seraphim is a thrilling page-turner, as well as a deeply humane investigation into the many forms of justice. It will make you look at the world differently—as much as a book could hope to do.”— Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
“Seraphim will receive much well-deserved praise for its fearless, page-turning expose of a blind, deaf, and dumb justice system in the often nightmarish cityscape of post-Katrina New Orleans. But the fierce impact of this marvelous novel could not have been realized without the compelling, big-hearted portraits of the fallen angels whose quixotic efforts attempt to redeem a broken world.” — Steve Stern, author of The Village Idiot
“Beyond its careful plotting, which picks up momentum like a runaway streetcar as it hurtles towards its haunting conclusion, and an authenticity of detail clearly ripped from direct experience, Seraphim is shot-through with moral outrage at a system that consistently fails to serve or protect the most vulnerable. Perry has written a book that, like a Mardis Gras reveler, wears a variety of masks to lure us in—murder mystery, courtroom drama—in order to bring us to face with his true subject: the limits of rules, of empathy, of words and stories themselves. A complicated and important book.” — Itamar Moses. playwright, “The Four of Us”
“Debut novelist Perry, a former New Orleans public defender, has wonderfully distilled a world of hurt onto the page.” — First Clue
“[A] promising debut… with often-breathtaking prose… Crime fiction fans will be eager to see what Perry does next.” — Publishers Weekly
“Joshua Perry’s New Orleans based novel Seraphim is about many things; social justice/injustice, race/racism, friendship and betrayal, crime and punishment and the realpolitik of judicial compromise. It is what I think of a ‘lived’ novel; the characters and voices, the intimate details observed, small defeats and even smaller victories feel so true to life that the reader can forget that the story, although well anchored in a world of experience, is fiction.” — Richard Price, author of Clockers, Lush Life, and The Wanderers
“… reminded me a little of classic Richard Price novels, examining injustice and the ways in which it marks those working in and outside the system. But “Seraphim” also veers off into larger examinations of Jewish faith and mysticism… less a crime novel than it is a meditation on the cumulative effect of crime on individuals, and on a city. Perry writes as if he has seen too much and come through the other side.” — Sarah Weinman, The New York Times
“[T]his debut is a well-written portrait of different codes of masculinity and of a city often abandoned to its demons.” — The Times
“The writing in this debut novel, by an author who previously held Ben’s job, is as sharp as broken glass. It’s philosophical, bluesy, anger-driven crime fiction at its best.” — Morning Star