01/22/2024

The ambitious and lyrical debut novel from poet Williams (Mutiny) portrays a Missouri town populated by formerly enslaved people who’ve escaped their bonds with help from a conjurer. The epic begins in 1834, north of St. Louis, when a free Black woman named Saint manages to purchase a plot of land in Graysville, a community planned for white people, by offering $1,500 against an asking price of $200. After the sale is completed, the white residents flee, and Saint renames the town Ours. She then frees all the enslaved people at six plantations by casting a spell on the white owners that renders them fatally ill. The town continues to grow and remains unmolested because Saint’s spells, which she was never properly trained to use, have inadvertently caused a “white plague” that causes the deaths of all local white people who believe Black folks are inferior. By the late 1840s, Saint’s prohibition on leaving the town causes residents to question whether they’re truly free, and she faces scrutiny for her imperfect conjuring abilities. The story runs on a bit too long, but the prose is often lively (newly liberated children “moved in the heat, the fire yanking sweat from their bodies, their naked feet sliding on the grass”). Williams’s accomplished narrative leaves readers with much to ponder. Agent: Bill Clegg, Clegg Agency. (Feb.)

Praise for Ours:

“[An] ambitious debut . . . In lush, ornamental prose, Williams, who is also a poet, traces many characters’ entwined journeys as they seek to understand the forces that assemble and separate them. The novel is an inventive ode to self-determination and also a surrealistic vision of Black life as forged within the crucible of American history.” —The New Yorker

“Transcendent.” —Time

“A captivating, complex debut.” —People

“Deeply absorbing . . . Ours, for all its elements of magic, fantasy, and mythology, is a realistic depiction of how we might arrive at utopia: through people who are always trying to become, always finding ways to navigate and survive harsh realities, always reaching for moments of joy and intimacy.” —Los Angeles Times

“There’s nothing that hits like a truly magnetic work of magical realism, and Ours by Phillip B. Williams has all the makings of a stunner. . . . Williams is unabashedly brilliant.” —Elle

“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

“Ours joins a canon of similar works that have appeared in recent years, such as Jesmyn Ward’s recent novel Let Us Descend and Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize–winning 2016 The Underground Railroad. . . . By taking such care to document the horrors of slavery alongside the ‘freedom [his characters] deserve,’ Williams seems to offer the possibility of a world beyond trauma.” —Financial Times

“A transcendent and lyrical exploration of freedom that delivers a fluid, spiritual and empowering meditation on the complexities of reclaiming identity . . . Williams has assembled a vivid and theatrical ensemble in ‘Ours’ and given them plenty of room to access their humanity as their lives intersect and intertwine. The result is a spiritual, redemptive and stirring look at the numerous shapes autonomy takes.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“A multigenerational epic that will sweep you off of your feet. . .Williams possesses a brilliant imagination and understanding of storytelling.. . .[He] uses his poet’s ear in crafting his prose, and the words shine on every page.” —Book Riot

“Phillip B. Williams establishes that his lyrical gifts, which work so well in poetry, have the strength to support a nearly six-hundred-page tome in his debut novel. . . . Ours is a novel that touches several centuries, exploring the nature of freedom, the limitations of safety, and the ways that love traps and frees a soul.” —The Rumpus

“Ours is so vivid a glimpse into the lives of formerly enslaved people that it reads with the beauty and urgency of a spoken-word poem.. . .This is an important novel, peopled with vivid characters literally and figuratively hidden from view. Every scene portrays a people trying to understand themselves, individuals trying to give and receive love, attempting to balance hope with trauma.” —Star Tribune

“A sweeping, epic novel . . . remarkable.” —Town & Country

“Now, this, this is the one.. . .The narrative, bolstered by effervescent prose, Black spirituality, mythology, and surrealism, sweeps over four decades, showing what love can do to you.” —Book Riot

“Williams has a voice that soars across each page, breathing life into his dazzling array of characters—the lovers and the malcontents, the queer and the mystical, the brazen and the cautious. At an incredible six hundred pages long, Ours is nevertheless a novel worth savoring.” —Shelf Awareness (starred review)

“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’s novel.. . .What keeps you attentive, and the sweeping narrative anchored, are the rich characterizations and, most of all, the often-startling impact of Williams’s poetically illuminated language. A multilayered, enrapturing chronicle of freedom that interrogates the nature of freedom itself.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Ambitious and lyrical. . .Williams’s accomplished narrative leaves readers with much to ponder.” —Publishers Weekly

“Ours is the epic and lyrical debut novel by poet Phillip B. Williams, featuring unforgettable characters woven together with folklore and humanity’s search for freedom.” —B&N Reads

“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

“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 U.S. 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 nineteenth-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’s 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

Joniece Abbott-Pratt performs this multigenerational novel set over several decades in the American South. In the 1830s, a mysterious woman named Saint frees enslaved people from plantations throughout Arkansas and brings them to a town they call Ours. There they find a safe haven from the rest of the world. But when Saint tightens her control of the townspeople, they begin to wonder what it means to be a free Black person in America. Abbott-Pratt voices the many characters who appear in Saint's orbit, moving seamlessly through different accents. Abbott-Pratt's cadence enthralls listeners, giving weight to this sweeping epic. Her performance is a stunning example of a masterful narrator at her best. K.D.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

★ 2023-12-06
A gorgeously written, evocative saga of Black American survival and transcendence, blending elements of fantasy, mythology, and multigenerational history.

The title of this crowded, resonant, and wildly imaginative first novel is taken from the name of its setting, an all-Black community just north of St. Louis in the 1830s. It came into being because a tough-minded, inscrutably powerful woman named Saint has, through “conjuring,” brought death and destruction to Southern plantations, freed their slaves, and provided a haven for them and their loved ones in “Ours”—a place that has the added convenience of being magically shrouded from outsiders. For a time, Saint’s daring attempt at establishing a secure, self-sufficient community for her people in the divided heart of antebellum America seems to be working. But, however shielded its inhabitants are from slave trackers and other white predators, Ours is no unmitigated paradise, with strains soon becoming apparent among its residents. “Freedom didn’t mean safety,” Williams writes, “and if there’s anything more shockingly unpredictable than freedom, it’s love.” And it’s not just love between men and women but love between parents and children, and the love Saint has for those she’s freed, that’s tested over decades of conflict, transition, and even transformation as a result of such new members of the community as a contingent of conjurers from New Orleans led by the formidable Frances, who “[switches] between ‘he’ and ‘she’ without care.” These transients add to the town’s complexity and strain its cohesiveness. 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 as the town’s insular sense of security is buffeted by the Civil War and its bruising aftermath. The reader is often challenged to keep up with worldly and otherworldly happenings. But 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.