Praise for Two-Step Devil

A Most Anticipated Book of 2024 from Literary Hub

"Brilliantly paced and exquisitely detailed, this striking novel takes on such weighty themes as faith, humanity, and frailty without a touch of melodrama . . . A spectacular masterpiece." -- Booklist, starred review

"Quatro reckons with faith and the nature of evil in her daring and disturbing latest . . . It's hard to turn away from Quatro's electrifying vision." -- Publishers Weekly

"Two-Step Devil is a bold interrogation--even a condemnation--of rigid adherence to Christian rules . . . Quatro's prose ranks among the best Southern writing . . . Quatro excels at getting the hairs on your arms to stand on end, if not through narrative suspense, then through the radical nature of her narrative aim . . . Without question, Quatro is a pioneering writer for a new South, our patron saint of Southern discomfort." -- Cat Acree, BookPage

"In 2014, a visionary 70-year-old man develops a bond with a captive teenage girl that could change both their destinies . . . By alternating between perspectives and pushing the novel's formal boundaries, Quatro daringly explores the evils and mercies, large and small, that steer the courses of human lives. A searing and innovative allegory for our turbulent times." -- Kirkus Reviews

"A gripping tale that plays with form as much as point-of-view to deliver an enrapturing story. This blistering yet tender work of speculative fiction does not seek to condemn, but instead expands the conversation into the dark crevices where religious zealotry and mental health meet the perceptions of good and evil." -- Leah Tyler, Atlantic Journal Constitution

"Quatro's theological seriousness is convincing because she imbeds it in so much lyricism--and because it is never cheap . . . Against oceanic feelings and collective creeds, literary fiction pitches specific encounter, particular hope, embodied grace. In three books that feel both fearless and forgiving, Jamie Quatro has made religious belief live because she let religious belief struggle. In doing so, she put it all together." -- Todd Shy, Comment Magazine

"Jamie Quatro is a writer of sinuous, muscular power and grace. Two-Step Devil is a starkly gorgeous story of God and loss and art and love, and her best book yet." -- Lauren Groff, author of The Vaster Wilds

"Reading this novel is like holding on to a live wire. Jamie Quatro is the real thing. The music of these sentences lights my hair on fire." -- Garth Greenwell, author of Cleanness

"In this spellbinding story of good and evil, revelation and madness, Jamie Quatro ponders all the ways in which innocence and vulnerability can be exploited in a culture that deliberately turns from human suffering. Beautiful and brave and brilliant, shot through with mystery and love, Two-Step Devil is a novel that only Jamie Quatro could have written -- and only, I suspect, with an angel peering over her shoulder." -- Margaret Renkl, author of The Comfort of Crows

"Jamie Quatro's Two-Step Devil compelled me with almost supernatural force. I could not turn away. It's a book that wrestles with the biggest questions about sin and salvation, violation and agency--striding fearlessly into narrative and political terrain almost always treated with knee-jerk, agenda-driven simplicity--but the pulse at the core of this breathtaking novel is unequivocally human, tender and alive--formally daring and utterly riveting." -- Leslie Jamison, author of Splinters

"Glorious, rich, mad, wonderful, daring and epic in its scope, Two-Step Devil is simply thrilling to read." -- Samantha Harvey, author of Orbital

"Jamie Quatro is one of the finest, and most fearless, American writers currently working. Her new novel,
Two-Step Devil, is, among other things, an intense exploration of the Christian faith, a deeply empathetic portrait of a weirdo, and a peerlessly innovative modern-day theodicy. I've never read anything like it. I suspect no one has." -- Tom Bissell, author of Creative Types

"The bold, ingenious, impassioned Two-Step Devil takes risks--tonally, formally and theologically--that would terrify a less masterly writer than Jamie Quatro. Her unforgettable characters, her meticulous observation of backwoods folklife and her wide-ranging intellect come together to create a novel that's a wild and rich entertainment, a profound interrogation of God's ways to Man, and--perhaps most daring of all--a story of simple human compassion." -- David Gates, author of A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me

"The characters in Jamie Quatro's Two-Step Devil will surely join the pantheon of Hazel Motes, Temple Drake, and Howard Finster. They are their own peculiar theological texts, defying doctrinal consistency--and thank God for that." -- Charles Marsh, author of Evangelical Anxiety

Praise for Fire Sermon

"Fantastic . . . Erotic, spiritual, poetic." -- New York Times

"Startingly original . . . Quatro makes us feel the absolute necessity of desire." -- Atlantic

Praise for I Want to Show You More

"Remarkable . . . [these stories] move between carnality and spirit like some franker, modernized Flannery O'Connor." -- The New Yorker