Hold It 'Til It Hurts
In this intense debut novel, New Orleans native Johnson richly details the story of adopted brothers Achilles and Troy Conroy, twentysomething black soldiers who have recently returned from Afghanistan to find that their father has died. Their white mother presents them with envelopes containing their birth parents’ information, and Troy soon disappears. Achilles, who has always regarded himself as his brother’s protector, takes off after him in a months-long quest that sees him traveling from New Orleans to Atlanta. Along the way, he falls in love with the rich do-gooder Ines Delesseppes, is tortured by harrowing memories of his tours in “Goddamnistan,” and sifts his pain and guilt over his mixed racial identity. While Hurricane Katrina batters New Orleans, Achilles receives devastating news about his brother’s fate. Johnson tells both a love story and a quest story while unleashing pointed social critiques, all the while taking readers into the turmoil of an ex-soldier seeking to reconcile his own conflicting emotions about war, family, and race. An impressive debut from a writer to watch. --Joanne Wilkinson