The Ballad of Black Tom (2016)

A Black hustler's route through New York becomes a rebuke to the assumptions inside Lovecraft's fiction. LaValle brings the occult into Tommy Tester's effort to support himself and his father, making exclusion central to the horror. The Ballad of Black Tom is short enough to hold its change of viewpoint tightly, yet leaves the earlier story looking different. Reading Lovecraft's Red Hook tale adds context without being a prerequisite.