Why a Lost DC Novel Is Getting New Attention

"One day more than 50 years ago, Carolivia Herron was stepping onto the curb at Piney Branch Road and Underwood Street, Northwest, when she was struck by a vision: a striking woman on the sidewalk, silhouetted by the sky, her hand raised in a gesture of repudiation. "It was like, 'Oh, wow, who is she? I've got to know her story,' " Herron says. The woman was imaginary, but powerful enough to start Herron's wheels spinning. When she got home, she began to write."

"First published 34 years ago by Random House, the cult classic is now being reissued by McNally Editions, a Manhattan publisher devoted to bringing attention to underappreciated work. "Ever since Thereafter Johnnie went out of print, I have believed that it would be back one day," Herron says. "But I thought it would come after my death. It's a great joy and surprise to see it reissued in my lifetime.""

"Enigmatic and fable-like, the novel is set in DC, and reviewers at the time compared it to James Joyce's take on Dublin in his works. Thereafter Johnnie is structured to mirror Milton's Paradise Lost. Narrated from a future after the fall of the American empire, it tells the story of a family split by incest-a metaphor for slavery, the nation's original sin."

Carolivia Herron, a classics lecturer at Howard University, experienced a sudden vision of a striking woman that inspired the dystopian novel Thereafter Johnnie. First published 34 years ago by Random House, the cult classic has been reissued by McNally Editions to bring renewed attention to underappreciated work. The novel is enigmatic and fable-like, set in Washington, D.C., and structured to mirror Milton's Paradise Lost. Narrated from a future after the fall of the American empire, the story centers on a family split by incest used as a metaphor for slavery, the nation's original sin. Critics praised its ambition and compared it to major contemporary works, though it did not reach a wide audience.

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