Christopher Hebert discusses Angels of Detroit with Sheila O'Connor
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Christopher Hebert’s new novel Angels of Detroit delivers a kaleidoscopic of an iconic American City, of abandonment, hope, violence, and resilience—and the lives intersecting on Detroit’s margins.
Once an example of American industrial might, Detroit has gone bankrupt, its streets dark, and its storefronts vacant. Miles of city blocks lie empty, saplings growing through the cracked foundations of abandoned buildings. Hebert takes an urban wasteland whose history is plagued with riots and unrest and reimagines it as an ambiguous frontier—a site of tenacity and possible hope. With razor-sharp, beguiling prose, we are drawn into the lives of multiple characters who are struggling to define their futures in this desolate landscape. Each of their desires are distinct and their visions for a better city are on a collision course in this mastery plotted epic. Driven by struggle and suspense, and shot through with a startling empathy, Christopher Hebert’s magnificent second novel Angels of Detroit unspools an American story of our time.
Christopher Hebert is the author of the novel The Boiling Season, winner of the 2013 Friends of American Writers Award. His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such publications as FiveChapters, Cimarron Review, Narrative, Interview, and the Millions. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and is editor-at-large for the University of Michigan Press. Hebert is currently the Jack E. Reese Writer-in-Residence at the University of Tennessee Libraries and lives in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Sheila O'Connor is the author of four novels, as well as short fiction, essays and poetry. She teaches in the MFA program at Hamline University where she serves as fiction editor for Water~Stone Review.
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