Dominion: A Novel by Addie E. Citchens (Hardcover)

Fiction - Southern - African American & Black - World Literature - 21st Century 

RELEASE DATE: 8/19/2025  (WILL SHIP DIRECTLY FROM OUR SUPPLIER'S WAREHOUSE)

In this taut Southern family drama, the sins of a favorite son rock a small Mississippi town.

Reverend Sabre Winfrey, shepherd of the Seven Seals Baptist Church, believes in God, his own privilege, and enterprise. Besides the barbershop and radio station he owns, he has an iron hand on every aspect of Dominion, Mississippi, society. He and his wife, Priscilla, have five boys; the youngest, Emanuel, is called Wonderboy―no one sings prettier, runs as fast, or turns as many heads. After a surprising encounter with a stranger, Wonderboy finds himself confronted by questions he’d never imagined, and his response will send shockwaves through the entire community. Told from the point of view of the women who love these two men, Dominion illustrates how we enable the everyday violence and casual sins of the patriarchy.

A Black Southern family drama that deals as much in tenderness and humor as it does in brutality, Addie E. Citchens’s Dominion reveals the many sinister ways in which we are shaped by fear and patriarchy.

AUTHOR BIO: 

Addie E. Citchens was born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and lives in New Orleans. A graduate of Jackson State University, she studied in the Florida State University Creative Writing Program and the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, the Oxford American's "Best of the South," Midnight & Indigo's speculative fiction anthology, and other publications. Her blues history work features prominently in Mississippi Folklife, and she has been heard on the Arts Hour on Mississippi Public Broadcasting. She was the inaugural recipient of the FSG Writer's Fellowship. Dominion is her first novel.

Review Quotes:

"A stellar Southern drama of secrets and sin . . . This Faulknerian, God-troubled novel is an earthly scorcher shot through with unforgettable images . . . Readers will be stunned."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Soaring . . . A stunning debut."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"This stellar, utterly assured debut . . . simply crackles . . . [Citchens is] a bright new voice."
--Brittany Allen, Literary Hub

"A new voice as fierce and lucid as the Delta sun in August . . . Searing."
--C. Morgan Babst, Garden & Gun

"A wise, sophisticated, and impressively crafted novel of secrets, longing, and strength."
--Angela Flournoy, author of The Wilderness

"This is one hell of a novel. Dominion is about two women who see what they want to see, until they no longer can. The storytelling is layered and beautiful and ugly at the same time, and beneath the story there is the other story about small communities and secrets and powers and how feeling like you have to live up to unspoken expectations can destroy you and everyone around you from the inside out. It captures church community and the South and the gulf between the haves and have-nots with precision and keen observations. This novel will grab you in the gut and hold you there. It's absolutely outstanding. Once I entered this world I didn't want to leave."
--Roxane Gay, author of Opinions