Tuesday, March 5, 2019

Devils Within by S.F. Henson

Devils Within by S.F. Henson is a book that I think will haunt me for a long time, but I think that is the point.  It is an incredible story about guilt, growth, redemption, our past, and learning how to escape the ghosts of that past.  It is about nature vs. nurture and figuring out that you don't have to be someone you are not despite what you may have been told from a young age.  It is a story that will grab hold of you and force you to get uncomfortable, and will stay with you long after you have finished.

Devils Within is the story of Nathaniel Fuller, a young man with a dark past, who is starting a new life with an uncle he never knew existed.  Raised in a white supremacist group know as The Fort, Nate has a past that involves racism and violence.  His father, the leader of The Fort, has forced him in to a live that Nate doesn't want to live.  But one night, as Nate tries to run away, his father finally decides he has had enough.  But the tables turn and Nate kills his father in self defense.  After going through the court system and spending time in a psychiatric facility, Nate is being released to an uncle he has just met and is living under a new name.  He now how to learn to live with his past while at the same time figuring out how to live in a world that he has often hated.

The first person to reach out to him in his new school, Brandon, is someone that Nate had always been taught to hate on sight alone, simply due to the color of his skin.  But as Nate becomes closer with Brandon and others, he lives with the fear of his past coming back to haunt him.  When The Fort finally tracks him down, will he find a way to put a stop to their hateful ways, or will he lose everything that he has been difficulty working towards.  

From Amazon:

Killing isn't supposed to be easy. But it is. It's the after that's hard to deal with.

Nate was eight the first time he stabbed someone; he was eleven when he earned his red laces--a prize for spilling blood for "the cause." And he was fourteen when he murdered his father (and the leader of The Fort, a notorious white supremacist compound) in self-defense, landing in a treatment center while the state searched for his next of kin. Now, in the custody of an uncle he never knew existed, who wants nothing to do with him, Nate just wants to disappear.

Enrolled in a new school under a false name, so no one from The Fort can find him, he struggles to forge a new life, trying to learn how to navigate a world where people of different races interact without enmity. But he can't stop awful thoughts from popping into his head, or help the way he shivers with a desire to commit violence. He wants to be different--he just doesn't know where to start.

Then he meets Brandon, a person The Fort conditioned Nate to despise on sight. But Brandon's also the first person to treat him like a human instead of a monster. Brandon could never understand Nate's dark past, so Nate keeps quiet. And it works for a while. But all too soon, Nate's worlds crash together, and he must decide between his own survival and standing for what's right, even ifit isn't easy. Even if society will never be able to forgive him for his sins.

Like a teen American History X, S.F. Henson's Devils Within is gut-wrenching, thought-provoking, no-holds-barred look at the plague of white supremacy in contemporary American culture that may have you examining your own soul. A 2018 William C. Morris Award finalist.

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