Born and raised in small town North Carolina—Elizabeth City, along the state’s northeast coast, to be exact—it’s no surprise De’Shawn Charles Winslow has become a master of capturing close-knit communities on the page. While the towns in his novels are fictional, they draw upon the features of real locales, and his ability to bring the varied personalities of these neighborhoods to life is a unique gift.
Winslow’s debut novel, In West Mills, garnered immediate attention, winning the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize in 2019 and the American Book Award in 2020. In 2023, he brought readers back to the fictional North Carolina town of West Mills with the murder mystery Decent People. Now, three years later, he’s spinning a bit further away from his southern roots with a suspenseful new tale set in upstate New York.
The Fervent Whites capitalizes on a popular trope in the subgenre of domestic thrillers—you never really know what your neighbors might be hiding. It’s June 1982 when James and Ella White are freed from a wrongful murder conviction. After a long year and a half spent locked up, they return to their home in Fervent—a seemingly peaceful Hudson Valley hamlet comprised of just a dozen homes—but nothing can ever be quite the same.
Sylvia “Syl” Upshaw and her best friend Lafayette “Fate” Jolly cared for the Whites’ adopted son, Morgan, in their absence. Syl adored Morgan from the moment she met him, so it was only natural that she stepped in to provide for him as if he were one of her own children. Fate did so in kind, despite his rocky history with the Whites. Perhaps they cared too much, though. Thinking the Whites were destined to spend the rest of their lives in prison, Syl and Fate decided to share a family secret with Morgan—a secret that would change the course of all their lives.
As the Whites settle back into the neighborhood, they express gratitude to Syl, genuinely thankful she cared for their son when they couldn’t. Syl, however, can’t shake the deep guilt she feels for revealing their secret to Morgan. As the days pass, the Whites grow colder toward Syl and Fate, flaming Syl’s fear that her own secretive actions have been discovered.
Then, the community is rocked by another life-altering event: a resident of Fervent turns up dead, murdered, sending the tight-knit community into a tailspin.
Winslow knows exactly what he is doing here and he executes it sharply in just 200 pages. Each chapter is taut and suspenseful. The big secret that Syl told Morgan is revealed fairly early in the book, but this doesn’t take away from the story—it drives the plot forward, leaving the reader questioning what is really happening. Is Syl’s guilt overtaking her and making her paranoid or are the Whites really onto her? Is she reading too much into the comments they make or do they know that she shared their secret with Morgan? Part of what makes this work is the way Winslow allows the narrative to drift back in time, showing the reader key moments in the characters’ pasts, then piecing together how these moments gave the way to the present.
The Fervent Whites isn’t just a thriller, though. While keeping readers on the edge of their seat, Winslow also digs into deeper themes of racism and homophobia within the Fervent community. He deftly explores the tension between the Whites—one of two white families living in a predominantly Black community, while also raising a young Black man—and Syl’s concerns for how they’ve gone about taking on this role. He also casts Fate as Syl’s lovable best friend, who has endured horrific treatment from his neighbors simply for loving who he wants to love.
Even the play on the novel’s title is smart. It’s more than just a nod to the hamlet of Fervent and the White family who live there. As defined by Merriam-Webster, the adjective fervent means “exhibiting or marked by great intensity or feeling.” The Whites as characters certainly display this in a number of ways throughout the novel, but the title implies even more than that. The connection to not just their surname, but also race, cannot go unnoticed the deeper one gets into the story.
Like winding the crank on a jack-in-the-box, the tension in this novel builds and builds, page by page, until the reader is fully enveloped. This slow, steady build ends in an explosive climax that will leave readers gasping aloud. If you are looking for a novel that takes neighborhood drama to the next level, an entertaining summer read with true depth, you definitely won’t want to miss out on The Fervent Whites.
The Fervent Whites is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of June 9th 2026.
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Synopsis
“The truth is closer than you think—just beyond the fence.
The year is 1982, and the people of the Hudson Valley community of Fervent have begun to move on from a homicide that upended the once quiet town. When the former neighbors who were convicted of the crime, James and Ella White, are proven innocent, released from prison, and return to Fervent, some people have cause for concern.
Sylvia Upshaw and her best friend, Lafayette “Fate” Jolly, are uneasy about the Whites’ return. While the Whites were incarcerated, Sylvia revealed an explosive secret to their adopted son, Morgan, with devastating consequences. During the murder trial, Fate’s testimony helped seal their fate. James and Ella won’t let the betrayals go unpunished. Sylvia and Fate quickly become victims of harassment from the Whites, and when another murder is committed in Fervent, the town is left to fend for itself.
Intimate and chilling, The Fervent Whites examines how small communities with long-simmering tensions behave when pushed to the limits of civility.”
