The Devil All the Time Book Summary

Set in the post-World War II American Midwest, 'The Devil All the Time' weaves a haunting tale of interconnected lives steeped in violence and dark desperation. The story revolves around Arvin Eugene Russell, a young man grappling with his traumatic past and the sinister forces that inhabit his world. As he encounters a cast of morally ambiguous characters—including a corrupt sheriff, a twisted couple of serial killers, and a faith-driven preacher—his quest for protection becomes a fight for survival. Pollock’s vivid prose and relentless tension reveal the human capacity for both evil and redemption. This gripping narrative will leave readers questioning the price of faith and the nature of evil itself.

By Donald Ray Pollock

Published: 2012

"In a world teeming with darkness, the flicker of light often feels like a cruel joke, a reminder that even the smallest hope can be drowned out by the weight of despair."

Book Review of The Devil All the Time

Now a Netflix film starring Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson A dark and riveting vision of 1960s America that delivers literary excitement in the highest degree. In The Devil All the Time, Donald Ray Pollock has written a novel that marries the twisted intensity of Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers with the religious and Gothic over­tones of Flannery O’Connor at her most haunting. Set in rural southern Ohio and West Virginia, The Devil All the Time follows a cast of compelling and bizarre characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s. There’s Willard Russell, tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific, who can’t save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from an agonizing death by cancer no matter how much sacrifi­cial blood he pours on his “prayer log.” There’s Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial kill­ers, who troll America’s highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. There’s the spider-handling preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick, Theodore, running from the law. And caught in the middle of all this is Arvin Eugene Russell, Willard and Charlotte’s orphaned son, who grows up to be a good but also violent man in his own right. Donald Ray Pollock braids his plotlines into a taut narrative that will leave readers astonished and deeply moved. With his first novel, he proves himself a master storyteller in the grittiest and most uncompromising American grain.

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In a world teeming with darkness, the flicker of light often feels like a cruel joke, a reminder that even the smallest hope can be drowned out by the weight of despair.

The Devil All the Time

By Donald Ray Pollock