Smoke Kings

When cousins Joshua and Nate view Joshua’s brother lying in the morgue, having been beaten, they swear that Darius won’t be “just another dead black boy.” Two years later, grief has solidified into a plan: Nate, Joshua, and friends Rachel and Isiah have taken Scott York, a white man, captive. They confront him about when his grandfather and three other white men threw a Black man off a bridge to his death. “Pawpaw? Impossible,” is the reaction, but the verdict is the same: Scott must each week deposit $311.54 into an account the group provides. They’re enacting a reparations program, and Scott’s nonchalance about the crime and incredulousness that the group would care about the dead man spur them on. Tensions caused by colorism and racial differences—Rachel is Black but often taken for Latina and Isiah is Korean American–and disagreements about whom to target introduce interesting ambiguities as the audacious plan unfolds and leads to mayhem. Mayfield’s foreword explains that he was inspired by Kimberly Jones’s video How Can We Win?. Readers can learn more about reparations and the history that makes them necessary by reading Ta-Nehisi Coates’sThe Case for Reparations and Bryan Stevenson’s (an author and activist who’s mentioned in the book) searing Just Mercy. A compelling and exciting debut.