THE JOHNSON FOUR

A family band is supported—and disrupted—by an unusual interloper.

Hammonds Reed’s debut adult novel is a saga about the three Johnson brothers, who, as the story opens in 1968, are an aspiring R&B act: headstrong Roman, sensitive River, and neurodivergent Rocco. Unifying them is Christmas Jones the Third, the ghost of a lynched boy they encountered while driving from Detroit to an audition. He’s missing a hand, fusses with his intestines, and wears the noose he was hanged with, but Hammonds Reed emphasizes his kindliness as much as his symbolism as an endangered Black body. As the boys’ parents, Odysseus and Emmeline, work to get their sons’ careers going in Pasadena, Christmas’ protectiveness gets the better of him, and he seriously hurts a schoolmate bullying Rocco. Christmas is banished; Rocco is institutionalized; Roman enlists to fight in Vietnam; and River becomes a famous solo act and talk show host blending elements of Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye, and Sammy Davis Jr. As the story moves through the ’70s and ’80s, crises abound for the Johnsons: addiction, mental illness, breakups, betrayals, all layered with various forms of racism. Hammonds Reed conscientiously gives each character plenty of stage time—her portrait of Rocco, whose challenges were misunderstood in this era, is well-drawn, and scenes of Christmas’ exile have lively magical-realist elements. But River is plainly the star of this show, as he navigates fame alongside obligations to family and his homosexuality, which he feels obligated to conceal. There are moments where Hammonds Reed heavy-handedly layers the melodrama, and her care with getting the details right about the Vietnam War or the early days of the AIDS crisis sometimes comes at the expense of more nuanced characterizations. But the novel is admirably and remarkably ambitious, capturing a family’s internal struggles along with those of American society.

A bulky, big-hearted family saga.