For his ferocious debut novel, Baldwin reached back to his experiences as a teenage Pentecostal preacher in Harlem and set them down in language steeped in the high and mighty rhetoric of Scripture. At age 14 John Grimes is bedeviled by the new stirrings in "his treacherous and bewildering body" and resentful of his preacher stepfather, once an energetic sinner, whose dual nature is now divided between the dutiful but restless John and John's older brother Roy, another hell-raiser in training. The boys' mother, Elizabeth, labors to keep the passions of her men in check, all the while holding secrets of her own. Their stories run dark and deep, while the fierce music of Baldwin's voice courses through those stories and lends them majesty.—L.G.