The Devil Three Times
'An exuberant slice of Southern gothic' (Financial Times)
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The Devil Three Times
Narrated by:
James Fouhey, Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Robin Miles
Buy Now for $26.99
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Narrated by:
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James Fouhey
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Joniece Abbott-Pratt
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Robin Miles
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By:
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Rickey Fayne
About this listen
'Compelling . . . I raced through this multi-generational, magical realistic story' DAILY MAIL
'A page-turning, rollicking novel . . . From the first page, I was spellbound' NATHAN HARRIS, New York Times bestselling author of THE SWEETNESS OF WATER
The Devil first visits Yetunde aboard a slave ship heading to America. Her home burned to ash, she lies shackled in the belly of the ship with only her dead sister's spirit for company. Worse, she has a caught the eye of a white man. To survive the hell that awaits her, the Devil offers his protection and 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 all her descendants in their darkest hour of need. There's Lucille, a conjure woman; Asa, the white-passing son of a slave; Louis and Virgil, a twentieth-century Cain and Abel; Cassandra, a girl who speaks to the dead; James, a father struggling 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 fiction.
'[An] exuberant slice of Southern gothic . . . Fayne follows Percival Everett and Andrea Levy in stressing the rich emotional lives of their characters' FINANCIAL TIMES
'Fayne's imaginative narrative illustrates how the choices made in each generation ripple through the next' WASHINGTON POST
'Ambitious, rollicking, heartbreaking, multi-vocal . . . it demands to be read over and over' MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE©2025 Rickey Fayne
Editorial Review
A reckoning. A prayer. A howl.
As I write this review I am still awestruck. This is undoubtedly one of the best books I’ve listened to so far this year. Rickey Fayne’s haunting debut grips you from the beginning with its Southern gothic atmosphere and taut emotional core. Fayne explores the idea that sometimes the devil we face is not a single event or person but the echo of mistakes made—and remade—across generations. What makes this novel exceptional is its intimacy, both poetic and raw. His characters are heartbreakingly real, and their search for meaning feels urgent and true. The Devil Three Times isn’t just a novel, it’s a reckoning. A prayer. A howl. And it will stay with you long after you finish it.—Dawn G., Audible Editor
Critic Reviews
I raced through this multi-generational, magical realistic story . . . Compelling (Sara Lawrence)
Fayne follows Percival Everett and Andrea Levy in stressing the rich emotional lives of their character and the wide streak of subversion running through every plantation. In this exuberant slice of Southern gothic, where ghosts roam and magic shimmers, slavery is a sticky web trapping and entangling everyone it touches
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
Fayne's imaginative narrative illustrates how the choices made in each generation ripple through the next
Fayne's debut novel does not lack for ambition . . . this family history contains magic and despair, migrations and hauntings - and echoes of the country's complex, often painful racial history writ large
[An] ambitious debut . . . the prose is consistently crisp and suffused with a feeling of hauntedness. A complex meditation on Black history with a Mephistophelian twist
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
A monumental debut. Fayne is a voice to be reckoned with . . . A book that embodies Black America in the past, present, and future
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
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
Rickey Fayne makes deep folklore and African American oral tradition feel alive, and thrilling. In a voice that is as humorous as it is wise, Fayne paints an unforgettable portrait of one family's journey through the peculiar landscape that is America
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