The Ballad of Black Tom is a horror novella set in 1920s New York. Victor LaValle reimagines H. P. Lovecraft’s xenophobic story The Horror at Red Hook from the perspective of an African American protagonist.
New York City, 1924.
Everyone who arrives in this bustling metropolis is searching for something magical, and nothing can persuade them otherwise. But Charles Thomas Tester is searching only for a way to earn a living in this enchanted city, while also caring for his disabled father.
The only magic he longs for is the ability to make his Black skin invisible — dressing in a suit and carrying a guitar, taking on odd jobs and drifting from Harlem to Flushing Meadows and Red Hook, trying to avoid the suspicious stares of wealthy white people and the police.
And then the real magic arrived.
When Tom agrees to deliver a strange book to an even stranger woman in Queens, he unwittingly opens the gates through which ancient, nameless forces will be unleashed — forces far better left dormant.
American author Victor LaValle revisits the events and characters of H. P. Lovecraft’s infamous xenophobic novella The Horror at Red Hook from the perspective of an African American man.
The Ballad of Black Tom (2016) received the Shirley Jackson Awards for Best Novella.
