In an alternate 1922 Macon, Georgia, the Ku Klux Klan is not merely a hate group but a doorway. Fed by the poison spread through D.W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation, some Klansmen have become literal monsters — inhuman "Ku Kluxes" feeding on hatred — and a sinister power is working to unleash something far worse upon the world.
Standing against them is Maryse Boudreaux, a young Black woman who wields a magic sword that carries the memory and fury of the enslaved dead. Alongside her sharpshooting friend Sadie and the fierce, hard-drinking veteran Chef, Maryse hunts Ku Kluxes through the swamps and streets of Georgia — even as the demons turn their sights on her, and a choice looms that could cost her everything.
P. Djèlí Clark's Ring Shout is a ferocious, fast-moving novella that fuses Southern Gothic horror, African American folklore, and cosmic dread into a reckoning with the real monstrousness of American white supremacy. Steeped in Gullah culture and the music of the ring shout, it is both a thrilling monster hunt and a searing act of historical imagination.