The fruit-flavored taffy candy that gives Red Now and Laters its title is a favorite of the novel's protagonist, young Ti' John, or John Paul Boudreaux, Jr. As he tells us, red was the "official color and flavor of all little black boys" in Houston: "If God ain't black then He's red, brother."
When Marcus J. Guillory's stunningly powerful, captivating debut novel starts, the Great Flood of '77 has just hit South Park, one of the poorer neighborhoods in Houston, and life is about "growin' up wet." Ti' John is four, and his dad, John Frenchy, a rodeo cowboy and a healer, is carrying him through the mud. His mom is a devout Catholic who tries her best to keep her young boy away from the ghetto and the violence. The boy has a guide, a spiritual leader, who appears to him, "a dark figure in a tattered gray suit," the ghost of his great-uncle, Jules Saint-Pierre Sonnier, also known as "Nonc." The novel is lush with Ti' John's Creole culture, language and voodoo (some footnotes guide us along).
As it travels back and forth from the Houston "hood" to the Creole world of mid-19th-century Louisiana, we are carried along by a special "voice," as Ti' John shares a joyful coming-of-age tale where "we are not promised angels," but hope "to catch a glimpse of their fluttering wings." --Tom Lavoie, former publisher