The “fearless” (New Yorker) and “distinctive” (San Francisco Chronicle) author of I Want to Show You More and Fire Sermon—whose recently published stories in The New Yorker and The Paris Review have brought her new attention—is known for her sharp, seductive prose and masterful exploration of the divine and the carnal in daily life. In Two-Step Devil, Quatro delivers a striking and formally inventive story of the unlikely relationship between two strangers on the margins of society and the shadowy forces that threaten their futures.

In 2014, in Lookout Mountain, Alabama, the Prophet—a seventy-year-old man who paints his visions—lives off the grid in a cabin near the Georgia border. While scrounging for materials at the local scrapyard, the Prophet sees a car pull up to an abandoned gas station. In the back seat is a teenage girl with zip ties on her wrists, a girl he realizes he must rescue from her current life. Her name is Michael, and the Prophet feels certain that she is a messenger sent by God to take his end-time warnings to the White House. Michael finds herself in the Prophet’s remote, art-filled cabin, and as their uncertain dynamic evolves into tender friendship, she is offered a surprising opportunity to escape her past—and perhaps change her future.

Moving through the worlds of the Prophet, the girl, and a beguiling devil figure who dances in the corner of their lives, Two-Step Devil is a propulsive, philosophical examination of fate and faith that dares to ask what salvation, if any, can be found in our modern world.

Praise for Two-Step Devil:

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice 
A Most Anticipated Book of 2024 from Lit Hub

“Just as the Prophet makes art out of detritus, Quatro alchemizes gloomy subject matter—sexual abuse, terminal disease, mental illness, poverty, suicide and American decay—into transcendent beauty . . . Quatro writes with the musicality and command of a mystic poet. Her sentences are also propulsive; the novel is a page-turner that leaves readers feeling deeply invested in the fates of the Prophet and Michael, individually and together . . . Theologically avant-garde and emotionally supple, Two-Step Devil is a Southern Gothic novel for fans of Denis Johnson, Frank Stanford and Wendell Berry, infused with the genre’s requisite imagery of ‘thick blankets of kudzu’ vines and smells of ‘blood, grease and sweat.’ And, like her forebears, Quatro wrestles with what it might look like to find and embrace a living faith in the modern world.”—Melissa Broder, New York Times

“Two-Step Devil is in part an unusual father-daughter story, as Ms. Quatro embroiders a fragile and very sweet relationship between the outcasts . . . Intimately evoked . . . Ms. Quatro is a rare novelist for whom a religious belief in good and evil is not merely a plot device but a genuine guide to describing reality.”—Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal

“In Jamie Quatro’s fiction, a person is a burning thing: a voracious creature, hot with emotional, sexual and spiritual needs; prey to the squalid demands of embodied existence. Surely it’s my imagination, but when I read Quatro—whether her story collection, I Want to Show You More (2013), her debut novel, Fire Sermon (2018), or her new book, the novel Two-Step Devil—I can’t shake the sense that the pages feel warm to the touch. I see, in my mind’s eye, her sentences threaded with muscle and sinew, letters glistening with sweat and blood . . . Across Quatro’s oeuvre, there is no forgetting that selfhood is material: pulp and tissue and cuts . . . If Quatro has written a song for the frail fleshsack, she has, too, intimated humanity’s cowardice in storytelling, the entwined ‘horrific and beautiful’ realities we balk at, and in desperate self-preservation, refuse to witness.”—Rachel Verona Cote, Washington Post

“I’ve long thought Lookout Mountain would be an ideal setting for a sharp-edged, tangy novel, layered with the region’s mysteries, and Jamie Quatro’s Two-Step Devil delivers the goods . . . In her previous work Quatro has dramatized the skirmishing desires of body and soul, and she continues to plumb those themes here. There are faint echoes of Cormac McCarthy and Dennis Covington’s Salvation on Sand Mountain. But like the Prophet’s singular visions, her literary meditations are hers and hers alone: Two-Step Devil quickens suspense right through to the last page, her sentences taut yet beautifully made, her political content subtle, her compassion resonant.”—Hamilton Cain, Chapter 16

“Two-Step Devil is not only a darkly humorous and insightful novel, but a dramatic tragedy. We are presented with brightness and shadow and must turn from one to face the other.” —Malavika Praseed, Chicago Review of Books

“Brilliantly paced and exquisitely detailed, this striking novel takes on such weighty themes as faith, humanity, and frailty without a touch of melodrama . . . A spectacular masterpiece.”—Booklist, starred review

“Quatro reckons with faith and the nature of evil in her daring and disturbing latest . . . It’s hard to turn away from Quatro’s electrifying vision.”—Publishers Weekly

“A gripping tale that plays with form as much as point-of-view to deliver an enrapturing story. This blistering yet tender work of speculative fiction does not seek to condemn, but instead expands the conversation into the dark crevices where religious zealotry and mental health meet the perceptions of good and evil.”—Leah Tyler, Atlantic Journal Constitution

“Quatro’s theological seriousness is convincing because she imbeds it in so much lyricism—and because it is never cheap . . . Against oceanic feelings and collective creeds, literary fiction pitches specific encounter, particular hope, embodied grace. In three books that feel both fearless and forgiving, Jamie Quatro has made religious belief live because she let religious belief struggle. In doing so, she put it all together.”—Todd Shy, Comment Magazine

“Two-Step Devil is an electrifying, ambitious work . . . This is a Southern tale, thrumming with the sounds of end-times Pentecostal preaching and ‘buzz-saw cicadas.’”—Ezra Craker, Sojourners

“Jamie Quatro is a writer of sinuous, muscular power and grace. Two-Step Devil is a starkly gorgeous story of God and loss and art and love, and her best book yet.”—Lauren Groff

“In this spellbinding story of good and evil, revelation and madness, Jamie Quatro ponders all the ways in which innocence and vulnerability can be exploited in a culture that deliberately turns from human suffering. Beautiful and brave and brilliant, shot through with mystery and love, Two-Step Devil is a novel that only Jamie Quatro could have written — and only, I suspect, with an angel peering over her shoulder.”—Margaret Renkl 

“Jamie Quatro’s Two-Step Devil compelled me with almost supernatural force. I could not turn away. It’s a book that wrestles with the biggest questions about sin and salvation, violation and agency–striding fearlessly into narrative and political terrain almost always treated with knee-jerk, agenda-driven simplicity–but the pulse at the core of this breathtaking novel is unequivocally human, tender and alive–formally daring and utterly riveting.”—Leslie Jamison

“Glorious, rich, mad, wonderful, daring and epic in its scope, Two-Step Devil is simply thrilling to read.”—Samantha Harvey

“I am in awe of Jamie Quatro’s genius tonal calibrations and miraculous conjurations, her firm and delicate grasp of her characters’ mysterious natures and overlapping struggles, their doubt-raddled, faithfully beating hearts. I was so moved by the Prophet’s thorny goodness and Michael’s strong life-wish. I found Two-Step Devil wickedly funny, endlessly surprising, and sublime.”—Karen Russell

“Jamie Quatro is one of the finest, and most fearless, American writers currently working. Her new novel, Two-Step Devil, is, among other things, an intense exploration of the Christian faith, a deeply empathetic portrait of a weirdo, and a peerlessly innovative modern-day theodicy. I’ve never read anything like it. I suspect no one has.”—Tom Bissell

“The bold, ingenious, impassioned Two-Step Devil takes risks—tonally, formally and theologically—that would terrify a less masterly writer than Jamie Quatro. Her unforgettable characters, her meticulous observation of backwoods folklife and her wide-ranging intellect come together to create a novel that’s a wild and rich entertainment, a profound interrogation of God’s ways to Man, and–perhaps most daring of all—a story of simple human compassion.”—David Gates 

“The characters in Jamie Quatro’s Two-Step Devil will surely join the pantheon of Hazel Motes, Temple Drake, and Howard Finster. They are their own peculiar theological texts, defying doctrinal consistency—and thank God for that.”—Charles Marsh

“Reading this novel is like holding on to a live wire. Jamie Quatro is the real thing. The music of these sentences lights my hair on fire.”—Garth Greenwell

Reading Group Guide

Written by Keturah Jenkins for Two-Step Devil

1. Two-Step Devil is set in Lookout Mountain, Alabama, where the Prophet lives in a remote cabin on the fringes of society. The novel incorporates elements of Southern Gothic literature, a writing style with various overlapping themes such as isolation, marginalization, violence, decay, macabre, and fantastic incidents. Explore how these themes are portrayed throughout the novel and their impact on the characters’ lives.

2. In Two-Step Devil, the story is initially told from the point of view of the Prophet before switching to the perspectives of Michael and Two-Step later in the novel. Analyze how this change in narration affects your understanding of events and characters. Consider the reliability of each narrator and provide reasons for your answers. Which of these three voices did you most enjoy reading?

3. In 1964, the Prophet sees his first vision, “One by one the people reached the edge of the bridge and stepped off” (p. 101). However, his tormentor, Two-Step, doesn’t appear until 2000. Why do you think Two-Step shows up so many years after the visions began? Additionally, why do you suppose ten years pass before the Prophet has another vision? Consider whether Quatro wants the reader to believe the prophecies are authentic or a result of mental illness, as Zeke believes. Did you recognize any of the events from the visions? If so, which ones?

4. After his father is diagnosed with cancer, Zeke tells him, “I can’t take care of you” (p. 53). Take a closer look at what Quatro may be saying about the complex relationship between a father and son. Discuss how the novel explores the concept of family and consider how the Prophet’s estrangement from Zeke strengthens his connection with Michael.

5. Throughout the novel, the Prophet’s cabin functions as a kind of character and plays a crucial role in establishing a sense of place. Discuss how this helps readers connect with the story on a deeper level.