As I’ve explained previously, 2024 was a disappointing time for me. One very bright spot, however, was learning Jamie Quatro had published a new novel, Two-Step Devil. Quatro is one of the few authors by whom I immediately purchase their newest work, no questions asked.
Two-Step follows two previous works by Quatro; Fire Sermon and I Want to Show You More. Follow the links to read my reviews. Both are well-crafted—Quatro writes compelling stories with exquisite plotting, character development, believable dialogue, and superb prose. And she writes from an admirable, thoughtful, profoundly rooted Christian perspective. The same way J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and Flannery O’Connor did, but in her own fresh voice.
Two-Step Devil is set in Lookout Mountain, Alabama, in a rustic cabin deep in the woods. It is the home of the Prophet, who paints the visions he receives on discarded hunks of wood and metal he rescues at an old junkyard. The visions come when suddenly a screen rolls down in front of the Prophet and images reveal the latest oracle. The Prophet believes he has a vital message to declare to the White House but is uncertain how to get it there. One day he is surprised when a fancy car rolls into the junkyard and from his hiding place, he sees a young woman in the back seat whose wrists are secured with zip ties. He rescues/kidnaps Michael, hides her in his cabin, and becomes convinced she is the one destined to take his message to the Oval Office. In a corner of the Prophet’s cabin lives the Two-Step Devil, always eager to bust into the story’s trajectory. I was drawn to all three characters, because of Quatro’s keen writing, but do believe I loved the depiction of Two-Step the best. I found the book a page-turner.
The first part of Two-Step Devil is told from the perspective of the Prophet; the second half from the perspectives of Michael and Two-Step.
So much kindness among you fleshsacks, is what I’m saying. You forget this. You polarize, call something evil and forget the goodness the evil engenders. You call something good and forget the evil the good depends on. But the kindness! If you counterbalanced all the kindness with the evils you keep putting before your eyes—your newspapers and TVs, apps and websites—you would not recognize your own planet. (p. 255)
Generally speaking, this is the sort of setting, characters, and tension of Flannery O’Connor’s stories. Not repeated or copied but parallel and updated in a still fallen world. And from the beginning I’ve sensed hints of O’Connor in Quatro’s stories—though very different, both authors write from a worldview deeply rooted in the gospel to a society that doubts that gospel. I have come to believe that what O’Connor was to the modern world in the opening decades of the 20th century, Jamie Quatro is to our world of advanced modernity in the 21st. I realize I do not have the expertise or academic position to make such a claim, but I believe it, nonetheless.
Like all her stories, Two-Step Devil is a multi-layered narrative that explores philosophical and theological questions about faith, fate, and the nature of good, evil, and reality. Please read Quatro’s books and pray she might continue to grace us with stories designed to shake us into seeing there is more to reality than we ever imagined.
P.S. As always, we recommend you order this book from Hearts and Minds Books.
Photo credit: by the author with his laptop and iPhone.
