What do you think?
Rate this book
Child and God: A Novel
Not yet published
Expected 19 Jan 27A lyrical, polyphonic debut about a brother and sister growing up in a Black Pentecostal Church in Detroit, exploring themes of revelation and concealment; desire and its sublimation; and the ultimate cost of belief from a major new literary voice.
Here is the perfect godly a stoic father, his dutiful wife, and their two children, a daughter and a son. On the surface, they are a shining example within their church—a beacon of God’s many promises. But the sister, older and more knowing than anyone suspects, quietly resists their religious context while the younger brother, not yet in middle school, appears destined for unwavering devotion—that is, if he can excise those parts of himself he fears God will not accept.
Told in tight, alternating narratives—Him, Her, and Them—Child and God captures both the intimacy of their individual selves and the fraught terrain of their shared world. What emerges is a haunting meditation on the American Black church—a testament to the beauty and terror of belief, the sanctity of family, and the profound psychological toll of devotion. At the novel’s heart is the child who is told he must be "trained in the way he should go," and the perilous cost of such training on the soul. In the literary tradition of James Baldwin and Douglas Stuart, Child and God is a searing, transcendent treatment of faith, identity, class, and sexuality.
Here is the perfect godly a stoic father, his dutiful wife, and their two children, a daughter and a son. On the surface, they are a shining example within their church—a beacon of God’s many promises. But the sister, older and more knowing than anyone suspects, quietly resists their religious context while the younger brother, not yet in middle school, appears destined for unwavering devotion—that is, if he can excise those parts of himself he fears God will not accept.
Told in tight, alternating narratives—Him, Her, and Them—Child and God captures both the intimacy of their individual selves and the fraught terrain of their shared world. What emerges is a haunting meditation on the American Black church—a testament to the beauty and terror of belief, the sanctity of family, and the profound psychological toll of devotion. At the novel’s heart is the child who is told he must be "trained in the way he should go," and the perilous cost of such training on the soul. In the literary tradition of James Baldwin and Douglas Stuart, Child and God is a searing, transcendent treatment of faith, identity, class, and sexuality.
- GenresFiction
272 pages, Hardcover
Expected publication January 19, 2027
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
Read
October 22, 2026As someone who grew up in the Southern Baptist church and has since left religion behind, I have a particular fondness for books that examine faith without necessarily attempting to advocate for or against it. I'm especially interested in stories about religious identity, the questioning of long-held beliefs, and the ways our childhood experiences with religion continue to shape us long after we've left the church. Child and God seemed like exactly the sort of book I would love, but I finished it feeling considerably more conflicted than I'd anticipated.
Quinn's novel follows a Black Pentecostal family of four, with chapters devoted to each of the parents and their two children. Pentecostalism was a fascinating departure from the religious environment I grew up in. Southern Baptists are a fairly buttoned-up bunch, at least compared to the ecstatic worship, speaking in tongues, and child preachers depicted here. As a white Southerner who grew up attending a predominantly white church, I've long been curious about the religious traditions that existed alongside my own childhood experiences, but which I knew comparatively little about. I went into this book hoping to find something familiar in its exploration of faith, and instead found myself in a world that often felt entirely foreign.
That isn't necessarily a criticism of the novel. I think there's something valuable about encountering religious experiences that don't resemble your own, and Quinn certainly gave me plenty to think about. But I also can't completely separate my expectations from my reading experience, and the emotional connection I hoped to find never quite materialized.
What I can say without hesitation is that Kevin Quinn is an extraordinary prose stylist. His writing is beautiful, frequently surreal, and capable of transforming an ordinary scene into something almost unearthly. Early in the novel, the son describes an experience during a church service in which he seems to float above the congregation, observing the worshippers from outside his own body. The imagery is so vivid that I can still picture the scene perfectly. There's something really special about writing that can leave that kind of impression, and Quinn achieves it repeatedly.
Unfortunately, despite the beauty of his prose, I struggled to connect with the characters themselves.
It's difficult to explain exactly why, but the closest comparison I can make is to the experience of watching a play, only in reverse. In theater, we're generally limited to what characters say and do, without direct access to their internal thoughts. Child and God operates almost entirely within its characters' heads, offering extensive access to their private experiences while providing comparatively little interaction between them. Strangely, the result is a similar sense of distance. I knew what these characters were thinking, but I rarely felt as though I knew them.
Interestingly, this approach worked much better for me in the chapters devoted to the parents. Quinn provides background on their lives, their pursuit of financial security and social standing, and the circumstances that led them to the church. As an affluent Black family living in a predominantly white neighborhood, their position within the community adds another dimension to their concern with appearances. I found the relationship between their ambitions, their religious identities, and their treatment of their children particularly interesting, although I'm hesitant to draw broader conclusions about the racial dynamics beyond what the novel itself depicts.
The parents frequently felt less like individuals and more like embodiments of the religious and social expectations they had internalized, but I actually appreciated that characterization. Their emotional distance seemed entirely appropriate for people so preoccupied with maintaining the appearance of a successful, respectable family that they failed to meaningfully engage with their own children. Quinn allows us to understand how they became these people without necessarily asking us to sympathize with them.
The problem is that the same emotional distance extends to the children, whose experiences I desperately wanted to connect with.
There's a fascinating, almost equal-and-opposite relationship between the trajectories of the son and daughter. The son begins as a deeply devout child, celebrated by his congregation and seemingly convinced of his own spiritual significance. As he grows older, he begins exploring his attraction to men and moves away from the religious identity that once defined him. His sister, meanwhile, experiences sexual abuse at the hands of a respected religious figure and eventually moves in the opposite direction, embracing an increasingly extreme understanding of her own holiness.
One child moves away from the church's understanding of righteousness, while the other becomes consumed by it. Neither finds peace.
I found this parallel compelling, but I was less satisfied with the execution of their individual stories. The son's movement away from religion felt strangely underexamined for a novel so deeply concerned with religious identity. His beliefs seem to lose their hold on him without much meaningful exploration of what that transition entails. His eventual murder by a man he meets for a sexual encounter was particularly disappointing. There's a long and uncomfortable history of queer characters meeting violent ends in fiction, and this felt like an especially familiar iteration of that trope. I don't object to tragedy, but I wanted something more from a character whose story had initially seemed so full of possibility.
The daughter's conclusion is disturbing in a different way. After becoming involved with a man who I'm pretty sure is meant to be portrayed as being in a cult and subsequently being abandoned by him, she comes to believe in her own divine holiness, eventually disposing of her possessions in pursuit of absolute purity and communion with God. Her relationship with religion has become profoundly destructive, yet her trajectory feels almost inevitable within the framework of the novel.
And through all of this, the parents remain remarkably unchanged.
Even after their family has effectively disintegrated, and even after they themselves become alienated from their congregation, they never seriously question the religious framework through which they've understood their lives. They simply find another church. The father demonstrates some reluctance, but ultimately yields to his wife's insistence.
I think this may be the most revealing aspect of Child and God. I went into the novel expecting a story about religious deconstruction, but what Quinn offers instead is a portrait of people who seem fundamentally incapable of deconstructing. Their beliefs are so thoroughly embedded in their identities that even the destruction of their family cannot persuade them to reconsider those beliefs.
There's something genuinely compelling about that idea, and I can appreciate what Quinn accomplishes with it. But appreciation and emotional investment aren't quite the same thing.
Ultimately, Child and God left me in a strange position. I admired the writing, appreciated the complexity of its themes, and found much of its examination of faith and family intellectually interesting. But I also spent much of the novel feeling removed from characters whose experiences should have been emotionally devastating. Quinn's narrative style is remarkably effective at communicating the isolation within this family, but it also left me isolated from the people at the center of the story.
It's a beautifully written novel, and one I'm glad to have read, even if I never quite found my way inside it.
Quinn's novel follows a Black Pentecostal family of four, with chapters devoted to each of the parents and their two children. Pentecostalism was a fascinating departure from the religious environment I grew up in. Southern Baptists are a fairly buttoned-up bunch, at least compared to the ecstatic worship, speaking in tongues, and child preachers depicted here. As a white Southerner who grew up attending a predominantly white church, I've long been curious about the religious traditions that existed alongside my own childhood experiences, but which I knew comparatively little about. I went into this book hoping to find something familiar in its exploration of faith, and instead found myself in a world that often felt entirely foreign.
That isn't necessarily a criticism of the novel. I think there's something valuable about encountering religious experiences that don't resemble your own, and Quinn certainly gave me plenty to think about. But I also can't completely separate my expectations from my reading experience, and the emotional connection I hoped to find never quite materialized.
What I can say without hesitation is that Kevin Quinn is an extraordinary prose stylist. His writing is beautiful, frequently surreal, and capable of transforming an ordinary scene into something almost unearthly. Early in the novel, the son describes an experience during a church service in which he seems to float above the congregation, observing the worshippers from outside his own body. The imagery is so vivid that I can still picture the scene perfectly. There's something really special about writing that can leave that kind of impression, and Quinn achieves it repeatedly.
Unfortunately, despite the beauty of his prose, I struggled to connect with the characters themselves.
It's difficult to explain exactly why, but the closest comparison I can make is to the experience of watching a play, only in reverse. In theater, we're generally limited to what characters say and do, without direct access to their internal thoughts. Child and God operates almost entirely within its characters' heads, offering extensive access to their private experiences while providing comparatively little interaction between them. Strangely, the result is a similar sense of distance. I knew what these characters were thinking, but I rarely felt as though I knew them.
Interestingly, this approach worked much better for me in the chapters devoted to the parents. Quinn provides background on their lives, their pursuit of financial security and social standing, and the circumstances that led them to the church. As an affluent Black family living in a predominantly white neighborhood, their position within the community adds another dimension to their concern with appearances. I found the relationship between their ambitions, their religious identities, and their treatment of their children particularly interesting, although I'm hesitant to draw broader conclusions about the racial dynamics beyond what the novel itself depicts.
The parents frequently felt less like individuals and more like embodiments of the religious and social expectations they had internalized, but I actually appreciated that characterization. Their emotional distance seemed entirely appropriate for people so preoccupied with maintaining the appearance of a successful, respectable family that they failed to meaningfully engage with their own children. Quinn allows us to understand how they became these people without necessarily asking us to sympathize with them.
The problem is that the same emotional distance extends to the children, whose experiences I desperately wanted to connect with.
There's a fascinating, almost equal-and-opposite relationship between the trajectories of the son and daughter. The son begins as a deeply devout child, celebrated by his congregation and seemingly convinced of his own spiritual significance. As he grows older, he begins exploring his attraction to men and moves away from the religious identity that once defined him. His sister, meanwhile, experiences sexual abuse at the hands of a respected religious figure and eventually moves in the opposite direction, embracing an increasingly extreme understanding of her own holiness.
One child moves away from the church's understanding of righteousness, while the other becomes consumed by it. Neither finds peace.
I found this parallel compelling, but I was less satisfied with the execution of their individual stories. The son's movement away from religion felt strangely underexamined for a novel so deeply concerned with religious identity. His beliefs seem to lose their hold on him without much meaningful exploration of what that transition entails. His eventual murder by a man he meets for a sexual encounter was particularly disappointing. There's a long and uncomfortable history of queer characters meeting violent ends in fiction, and this felt like an especially familiar iteration of that trope. I don't object to tragedy, but I wanted something more from a character whose story had initially seemed so full of possibility.
The daughter's conclusion is disturbing in a different way. After becoming involved with a man who I'm pretty sure is meant to be portrayed as being in a cult and subsequently being abandoned by him, she comes to believe in her own divine holiness, eventually disposing of her possessions in pursuit of absolute purity and communion with God. Her relationship with religion has become profoundly destructive, yet her trajectory feels almost inevitable within the framework of the novel.
And through all of this, the parents remain remarkably unchanged.
Even after their family has effectively disintegrated, and even after they themselves become alienated from their congregation, they never seriously question the religious framework through which they've understood their lives. They simply find another church. The father demonstrates some reluctance, but ultimately yields to his wife's insistence.
I think this may be the most revealing aspect of Child and God. I went into the novel expecting a story about religious deconstruction, but what Quinn offers instead is a portrait of people who seem fundamentally incapable of deconstructing. Their beliefs are so thoroughly embedded in their identities that even the destruction of their family cannot persuade them to reconsider those beliefs.
There's something genuinely compelling about that idea, and I can appreciate what Quinn accomplishes with it. But appreciation and emotional investment aren't quite the same thing.
Ultimately, Child and God left me in a strange position. I admired the writing, appreciated the complexity of its themes, and found much of its examination of faith and family intellectually interesting. But I also spent much of the novel feeling removed from characters whose experiences should have been emotionally devastating. Quinn's narrative style is remarkably effective at communicating the isolation within this family, but it also left me isolated from the people at the center of the story.
It's a beautifully written novel, and one I'm glad to have read, even if I never quite found my way inside it.
October 12, 2026
No notes.
Edit: I will have notes. Let me find them in my brain.
Note: Ok, it’s been 4 hours, and I’ve had some time to think this one through and the writing format and narrative depth mirrors that of Tommy Orange’s There There/Wandering Stars Duo-logy and Tyriek K. White’s We are a Haunting.
Child and God breaks down one family’s complex relationship with the black Pentecostal church, in their Detroit hometown. Told over the course of generations, readers get front row seats into the trauma that plagued our matriarch and how the church pieced her back together, feeding her the vital nutrients she needed to survive.
But as time goes on, the complexities of each coming decade take a toll on their faith and how they come to rely on this entity. We see a son, yearning to experience love how he desires to be loved, in the arms of another boy, but feeling the need to appease God and his mission to him, becoming a zealot in his ways to better represent his family in the eyes of the church.
Then there’s the daughter, whose difficult relationship with her parents reflects that of her own mother’s maternal relationship, sending us down a cyclical spiral that leaves the daughter vulnerable to those who seek to drain her beauty and steal her likeness.
The parents are struggling with acceptance from all angles, and don’t really know themselves from the wealthy projections they’ve inherited, further distancing themselves from their children.
I was awestruck at the mentally ill incantations from each of these players and how they further proved the delusion that such zealousness conveys.
I felt this narrative so deeply and am very eager for this to hit shelves on January 19, 2027. I am immeasurably thankful to Knopf Books, Kevin Quinn, and NetGalley for the advanced access!
Edit: I will have notes. Let me find them in my brain.
Note: Ok, it’s been 4 hours, and I’ve had some time to think this one through and the writing format and narrative depth mirrors that of Tommy Orange’s There There/Wandering Stars Duo-logy and Tyriek K. White’s We are a Haunting.
Child and God breaks down one family’s complex relationship with the black Pentecostal church, in their Detroit hometown. Told over the course of generations, readers get front row seats into the trauma that plagued our matriarch and how the church pieced her back together, feeding her the vital nutrients she needed to survive.
But as time goes on, the complexities of each coming decade take a toll on their faith and how they come to rely on this entity. We see a son, yearning to experience love how he desires to be loved, in the arms of another boy, but feeling the need to appease God and his mission to him, becoming a zealot in his ways to better represent his family in the eyes of the church.
Then there’s the daughter, whose difficult relationship with her parents reflects that of her own mother’s maternal relationship, sending us down a cyclical spiral that leaves the daughter vulnerable to those who seek to drain her beauty and steal her likeness.
The parents are struggling with acceptance from all angles, and don’t really know themselves from the wealthy projections they’ve inherited, further distancing themselves from their children.
I was awestruck at the mentally ill incantations from each of these players and how they further proved the delusion that such zealousness conveys.
I felt this narrative so deeply and am very eager for this to hit shelves on January 19, 2027. I am immeasurably thankful to Knopf Books, Kevin Quinn, and NetGalley for the advanced access!
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
Kevin Quinn's novel, Child and God, is a literary exploration of religion and the way that it can impact and change each person that believes or fails to belief. It keeps a tight focus on the unnamed brother and sister at its beating heart, in a Pentecostal Christian household in 1990s Detroit. Quinn tackles some very heavy, emotive subjects but never does his novel feel like it is preaching or being heavy-handed. He keeps a steady hand on his narrative, and allows the emotional intensity of these siblings to be out guide. In doing so he has written a memorable, beautiful novel. He writes extremely well, with an assured, confident hand, with prose that has a undeniable beauty to it. I loved this, locked in and reading it through in one sitting. Highly recommended.
Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for the ARC.
Thank you to the publishers and Netgalley for the ARC.
October 22, 2026
Child and God
Quinn’s debut novel tells the story of a black family in Detroit. To those around them they appear to be the perfect Pentecostal family. Told in three different perspectives him, her, and them, each chapter a vignette exploring the members of the family and the secrets they hide as well as their inner battles of identity and faith. The youngest son, afraid of the closet he was born in. The oldest daughter, a rebellious teenage girl following her desires. The mother and father trying to escape the mistakes of their families and raise their children right in their eyes.
Quinn’s prose is lyrical, often following the flow of a church sermon. The hypocrisies of following the word of god clashing with the life experiences of the family are written beautifully propelling the reader across the years. The toll of devotion from each of the characters ends in a story full of melancholy and sadness as the reader can see tragedies clearly coming while the members of the family are blinded by their faith and unaware of their hypocrisy.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free eARC for review purposes.
Quinn’s debut novel tells the story of a black family in Detroit. To those around them they appear to be the perfect Pentecostal family. Told in three different perspectives him, her, and them, each chapter a vignette exploring the members of the family and the secrets they hide as well as their inner battles of identity and faith. The youngest son, afraid of the closet he was born in. The oldest daughter, a rebellious teenage girl following her desires. The mother and father trying to escape the mistakes of their families and raise their children right in their eyes.
Quinn’s prose is lyrical, often following the flow of a church sermon. The hypocrisies of following the word of god clashing with the life experiences of the family are written beautifully propelling the reader across the years. The toll of devotion from each of the characters ends in a story full of melancholy and sadness as the reader can see tragedies clearly coming while the members of the family are blinded by their faith and unaware of their hypocrisy.
Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a free eARC for review purposes.
November 1, 2026
“In his library, their father hums. It is his way of telling God that he doesn't need any answers. There are many things he doesn't understand about the way God works, but he has learned to ignore the knocking in his ears that threatens to mute the sound of God's favor whenever things seem to be going the wrong way. Let go and let God. The words hang above the arch-way, reminding him that nothing good comes from challenging God to a duel in clarity. Everyone has wilderness experiences. Everyone gets locked within the fiery furnace at some point in their lives. Everyone finds themselves betrayed by their friends for the smallest amount of silver. Everyone at some point needs to forget what makes it impossible to forgive. Or else you wake up one day and wonder how you ended up with a life you secretly wished you could do over.”
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews