Finalist for the PEN Open Book Award Shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Finalist for the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction “A debut of enormous ambition” spanning eight generations of a Black family in West Tennessee as they are repeatedly visited by the Devil (Nathan Harris, New York Times bestselling author of The Sweetness of Water ) Yetunde awakens aboard a slave ship en route to the United States with the spirit of her dead sister as her only companion. Desperate to survive the hell that awaits her at their destination, Yetunde finds help in an unexpected form—the Devil himself. The Devil, seeking a way to reenter the pearly gates of heaven, decides to prove himself to an indifferent God by protecting Yetunde and granting her a piece of his supernatural power. In return, Yetunde makes an incredible sacrifice.   Their bargain extends far beyond Yetunde's mortal lifespan. Over the next 175 years, the Devil visits Yetunde's descendants in their darkest hour of need: Lucille, a conjure woman; Asa, who passes for white; Louis and Virgil, who risk becoming a twentieth-century Cain and Abel; Cassandra, who speaks to the dead; James, who struggles to make sense of the past while fighting to keep his family together; and many others. The Devil offers each of them his own version of salvation, all the while wondering: can he save himself, too?   Steeped in the spiritual traditions and oral history of the Black diaspora, The Devil Three Times  is a baptism by fire and water, heralding a new voice in American fiction. "Fayne’s imaginative narrative illustrates how the choices made in each generation ripple through the next."― Washington Post "Fayne's debut novel does not lack for ambition. Beginning with a Faustian bargain between a woman on a slave ship and the devil, Fayne traces the fallout of this deal across the generations of her descendants that follow. This family history contains magic and despair, migrations and hauntings — and echoes of the country's complex, often painful racial history writ large."― NPR "There is magic here, not as escapism but as a language of knowing and articulating what cannot be otherwise spoken...In Rickey Fayne’s debut novel...history doesn’t just haunt the present — it barges through the door, dripping sea salt and blood, demanding space."― Southern Review of Books "Ambitious, rollicking, heartbreaking, multi-vocal...In Fayne’s witchy, earthy rural Black Southern genealogy of struggle, the past is as real as the now. The consequences of everything we have done and not done are ever-unfolding... The Devil Three Times demands to be read over and over . "― Minneapolis Star-Tribune "Rickey Fayne draws from the well of African-American folklore in his generation-spanning debut...What stands out most is the feeling of intergenerational connection."― Wall Street Journal "A complex meditation on Black history with a Mephistophelian twist...the prose is consistently crisp and suffused with a feeling of hauntedness."― Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "As a debut novel – or even if it were not – this is a magnificent achievement, a poetic, multi-generational montage steeped in the over-churched milieu of the black American South." ― The Straits Times "Lively, irreverent...Fayne beautifully evokes each character's unique voice and essence in dialogue and description...Drawing broadly on spiritual traditions, folklore, and history, Fayne dramatically reimagines the origins of centuries of Black history and the quest for freedom in the Devil's unexpected backstory."― Booklist "A monumental debut. Fayne is a voice to be reckoned with a book that embodies Black America in the past, present, and future." ― Debutiful "A work of modern literary fiction of the highest order. I loved every moment that I spent immersed in the richness of this narrative, and felt honored and humbled to be given a glimpse of the trials and triumphs of these lives."― Historical Novel Society “A major new talent announces himself with The Devil Three Times.  Rickey Fayne has written a structurally inventive novel that challenges nearly everything we've been taught about God and the Devil and the usefulness of Jesus’s love for Black folks. This book is daring, and it challenged me at every turn. I was also deeply moved by its soulful belief in a universe in which we are all connected across generations.” ― Attica Locke, New York Times bestselling author of Guide Me Home and Bluebird, Bluebird “A debut of enormous ambition that succeeds on every level. This is a page-turning, rollicking novel that is both an intimate family saga and an elegy for the American experience. Not since James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain  has a debut conveyed Black spirituality with such passion, style, and brio. From the first page, I was spellbound, and was left devastated by the novel’s end. This is what literature is all about.”― Nathan Harris, New York Times bes