Visitation of Spirits Author:Randall Kenan In a remarkable first novel -- uniquely conceived and executed -- Randall Kenan has created a vivid portrait of four generations of a Southern black family in rural North Carolina. — The novel follows Horace Cross, a brilliant, tormented teenager who is his family's greatest hope, through a night when demons -- perhaps literal, perhaps imagined -... more »- force him to confront his bleakest thoughts. Revolted by his homosexuality, flummoxed by his nonconformity and resentful of his family's closed-mindedness, Horace careens toward disaster, while in scenes that leap through time, we meet the other generations of the Cross family. Kenan shapes his novel as a series of struggles for understanding and enlightenment, contrasting Horace's strife with an older cousin's efforts to understand him. Although shifts in time and tone are often jarring and sometimes gratuitous, the strength and richness of Kenan's best passages sweep any objections aside.« less