“If Tom Wolfe, Jay McInerney, and Margo Jefferson somehow collaborated, this might have been the delightful result.” —Boris Kachka, The Atlantic

“Incandescent…full of sentences I want to cut out and glue to my forehead.” —Kaveh Akbar, New York Times bestselling author of Martyr!

“A masterpiece…At once fresh and original while delighting the reader with hints of Franzen, McInerny, Baldwin. This novel—a whodunit, a coming-of-age, a New York novel—heralds the arrival of a rarefied talent.” —Elin Hilderbrand, bestselling author of Swan Song

A gripping, elegant debut novel about a young Black man caught between worlds of race and class, glamour and tragedy, a friend’s mysterious death and his own arrest, from an electrifying new voice.

An arrest for cocaine possession on the last day of a sweltering New York summer leaves Smith, a queer Black Stanford graduate, in a state of turmoil. Pulled into the court system and mandated treatment, he finds himself in an absurd but dangerous situation: his class protects him, but his race does not.

It’s just weeks after the death of his beloved roommate Elle, the daughter of a famous soul singer, and he’s still reeling from the tabloid spectacle—as well as lingering questions around how well he really knew his closest friend. He flees to his hometown of Atlanta, only to buckle under the weight of expectations from his family of doctors and lawyers and their history in America. But when Smith returns to New York, it’s not long before he begins to lose himself to his old life—drawn back into the city’s underworld, where his search for answers may end up costing him his freedom and his future.

Smith goes on a dizzying journey through the nightlife circuit, anonymous recovery rooms, Atlanta’s Black society set, police investigations and courtroom dramas, and a circle of friends coming of age in a new era. Great Black Hope is a propulsive, glittering story about what it means to exist between worlds, to be upwardly mobile yet spiraling downward, and how to find a way back to hope.

BIO

Born and raised in Atlanta, Rob Franklin is a writer of fiction and poetry, and a cofounder of Art for Black Lives. A Kimbilio Fiction Fellow and finalist for the New England Review Emerging Writer Award, he has published work in New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and The Rumpus among others. Franklin lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches writing at the School of Visual Arts. Great Black Hope is his first novel.

REVIEWS

"If Tom Wolfe, Jay McInerney, and Margo Jefferson somehow collaborated, this might have been the delightful result." -- Boris Kachka, The Atlantic

"Dazzling...exquisite....Think Bonfire of the Vanities meets Bright Lights, Big City." -- Suzanne Vanatten, Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“A debut that shouts its arrival and a novel that thrills while making you think. Artful and transporting…a book I couldn’t wait to get lost in…compulsive.” -- Carole V. Bell, NPR.org

“With lush evocations of the world of wealth and cutting observations about the people who inhabit it, Franklin’s debut is a tour de force.” -- Charley Burlock, Oprah Daily (Best Summer Reads of 2025)

“It’s thrilling to see any author today aiming for the big stuff all at once: death, race, sex, class, addiction. It’s beyond thrilling—incandescent, even—when a writer like Rob Franklin comes along with the formal virtuosity to carry those lofty conceptual ambitions. Franklin’s prose is eminently readable, frequently laugh-out-loud funny, and full of sentences I want to cut out and glue to my forehead. This book is so smart, so moving, so earned; as soon as I finished, I started reading it again.” -- Kaveh Akbar, New York Times bestselling author of Martyr!

[H]  S&s/Summit Books  /  June 10, 2025

 1.4" H x 9.25" L x 6.3" W (1.05 lbs) 320 pages