Dominion: A Novel

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.

About the Author

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 Writing Program and the Callaloo Writers’ 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 Radio. She was the inaugural recipient of the FSG Writer’s Fellowship. Dominion is her first novel.