Ours

“Williams transports us back to the antebellum South—but with a liberatory, supernatural twist . . . Fans of The Underground Railroad, The Water Dancer, and Let Us Descend will devour this lyrical and surreal saga.” —Oprah Daily “A gorgeously written, evocative saga of Black American survival and transcendence, blending elements of fantasy, mythology, and multigenerational history . . . resonant [and] wildly imaginative . . . As in the magical realist sagas of Latin America or the grand fictions of Russian literature, time itself becomes a morphing, enigmatic character in Williams’ novel . . . what keeps you attentive, and the sweeping narrative anchored, are the rich characterizations and, most of all, the often-startling impact of Williams’ poetically illuminated language. A multilayered, enrapturing chronicle of freedom that interrogates the nature of freedom itself.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred) “A sweeping, epic novel . . . remarkable.” —Town & Country “A beautifully-written and ambitious epic about the complexity of freedom. Williams crafts an expansive, original world filled with characters who linger long after the final page.” —Brit Bennett, New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Half “Ambitious and lyrical . . . Williams’s accomplished narrative leaves readers with much to ponder.” —Publishers Weekly “In Ours, Phillip B. Williams creates a fictional town with a complicated, magical history that is as thrilling to explore as the Macondo of Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. The mysteries at the heart of this novel are deeply considered, as is the concept of freedom itself. With a poet’s precision of language and a seasoned storyteller’s attention to character, Williams has written a truly one-of-a-kind epic.” —Angela Flournoy, author of The Turner House “As consummate and compelling a storyteller as he is a poet, in Ours Phillip B. Williams spins a stellar tale of resistance and reconstruction that could school any US history book. Crossing rivers and decades, involving folk culture and the miraculous as a matter of course, and centering on the mysterious Saint and the secret community she creates in the midst of 19th century chattel slavery and the long battle for Black freedom, Ours speaks to our past, present and future with incomparable poetic verve.” —John Keene, National Book Award-winning author of Punks: New and Selected Poems “Phillip Williams’ Ours is a radical re-creation of our pasts. With a keen eye to historical detail and the expansive imagination of a poet, Williams has constructed a jewel of a novel, a deeply felt exploration of the strengthening ties and broken cords of kith and kin under the weight of complicated histories. In the uncertain future that awaits us, Ours illuminates a greater understanding of what it means to be human and the complex, tangled lives and afterlives of enslavement.” —Kaitlyn Greenidge, author of Libertie