The Fervent Whites

by De'Shawn Charles Winslow

Genres: General Fiction; Literary Fiction; Thrillers; Suspense

Synopsis

Guilt, shame, and suspicion swirl as a small community in upstate New York turns on itself in this moody, propulsive thriller from the award-winning writer of In West Mills.

“Endlessly entertaining . . . Does anyone write about the intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality with more honesty and intensity than De’Shawn Charles Winslow?”—Wiley Cash, author of When Ghosts Come Home

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.

Release date: June 9, 2026

Publisher: One World

Print pages: 208

Sample

Chapter One

June 1982

The triplet of knocks came from the front door just as Sylvia Upshaw and her two children were putting on their shoes, about to walk over to Mrs. Talbot’s house. Syl’s daughter, GiGi, her first-born, peered through the living room window, which looked out onto their small front lawn.

“It’s the Whites,” she said.

“The Whites? James and Ella White?” Syl asked. A sudden pang of fear fluttered in her stomach.

Then Syl’s son, RJ, had a look. “What the—” RJ said, his eyes fixed on their unexpected guests.

Syl shooed her teens away from the window and glanced out herself. There they stood, James and Ella White, her fresh-out-of-prison neighbors. James was rocking back and forth on his heels. Ella stood still, wearing what Syl might describe as a half-smile. James stretched his neck and winced. Everyone in the hamlet of Fervent—in all of Saugerties, and maybe even in the whole Hudson Valley—knew they had been released from prison a week ago. But no one had expected them to return to the neighborhood.

The two of them stood on Syl’s porch, which in actuality was just a wide, square block of cement. Only one of Syl’s kitchen chairs could fit. Syl had asked her ex-husband to build a real porch so that they could sit out on it together, but he never got around to it. He had been too busy getting around to other women’s needs.

“I’ve never spoken to murderers before,” RJ whispered, towering over Syl and GiGi.

“You won’t speak to any today, either, dummy,” GiGi shot back. “They’re innocent, remember?”

“You know what I meant.”

“Hush, both of you,” Syl ordered. “Stand over there.” She pointed to a far corner of their living room where a bookshelf hosted forty or fifty paperbacks—romances, mysteries, and thrillers.

“Ma, open the door. You’re being rude.”

“Quiet, GiGi,” she whispered, pointing again to the corner. GiGi hesitated—a new but subtle defiance the girl had begun showing in recent weeks, now that she was a rising high school senior. RJ, a year younger than his sister, would soon follow suit, Syl imagined.

Before heading to the door, Syl looked out the window at the Whites’ hands. The rippling in her stomach got quicker by the second. She saw no weapons or anything that could be used as one. Syl used her foot to move the old beach towel she had tucked at the bottom of the door. June was three-quarters gone and summer was in full swing. They had been running the window unit for a couple of weeks. Most of the houses in Fervent leaked air; no matter how hard the owners tried to keep the cool in, it found its way out. Back in ’73, Syl had inherited the house, and its problems and its mortgage, from her great-aunt.

Syl opened the heavier inner door and wondered if the glass storm door that separated her from the Whites reminded them of receiving visitors at Bedford Hills and Attica. Given how close Syl and her children had been to the Whites’ son—Morgan had been one of the kindest, most dependable people in the hamlet—she also wondered how they felt about never receiving visits or even a letter from her.

“Sylvia,” Ella said, head tilted just a little to one side. Ella never called her Syl, like everyone else. “It’s so good to see you.” The flutter in Syl’s gut was now annoyance at what she suspected was phoniness coming from Ella.

“Ella. James,” Syl said, folding her arms just under her breasts. “I didn’t know you two were back in Saugerties.”

The Whites donned what may have been genuine smiles—given their newfound freedom. They weren’t cursing Syl or daring her to come out and face them. Do they know I told their secret while they were in prison? she wondered.

Most of Ella’s hair was gone. Cut short, like the lady’s haircut in Rosemary’s Baby. Syl couldn’t remember the lead actress’s name. Ella must have made the change in the past few days, because last week, when Syl saw the short clip of her speaking at the news conference—it aired live while Syl was at work—her light blond hair was pulled back in the ponytail she was known for. Syl was surprised by how much she liked Ella’s striking new look.

With far less hair, Ella’s green eyes seemed greener, like those of the feral black cats that roamed their hamlet, meowing for table scraps, which were often given without hesitation. Ella was wearing a pair of dark blue denims, and the color of her button-up blouse made Syl want honeydew melon. Ella had always been a petite woman, but now she looked strong, her jawline more pronounced, her forearms rippling.

James, who was much taller than his wife, was also wearing new-looking denims, along with a plain white T-shirt. James had let his hair grow to his shoulders, about the same length as Syl’s. But it was no longer the mostly-pepper-and-some-salt it had been when he and Ella went to prison early last year. Now it was mostly salt.

He had put on some heft, Syl observed, and from the way his shirt hugged him, it seemed like all muscle—the blue veins in his forearms more visible, more threatening, than before.

But he’s not a murderer, Syl, remember.

James, a military veteran—he’d served in Vietnam—had always been fit. He was accustomed to rigorous, vigorous daily exercise. It was nothing to see him jogging around the hamlet’s one oval-shaped street. In the winter, when the trees were bare, Syl could see straight down to the riverbank where James sometimes went to do his jumping rope and other exercises Syl never knew the names for. Just as common was to see James doing pull-ups on basketball hoops over in town, or push-ups against the cold pavement of the parking lot at Aco, Inc., the toy factory where she worked.

It was also where James had worked before Paul Hope was killed.

“Sorry to drop by unannounced like this. We tried to call from Mrs. Talbot’s, but the line was busy,” Ella said. GiGi had been on the phone for the past hour, the receiver tucked between her head and her left shoulder, a Prince album playing loudly so Syl couldn’t hear her gossiping. Syl liked Prince, and she was especially taken by the second cut on that record, “Sexuality.” Still, Syl didn’t think it needed to be blasted to be enjoyed. “I told James we may as well just knock and see, since we saw your car.”

Syl couldn’t believe they had gone to Mrs. Talbot’s. Syl knew how her neighbors could be. Curt and Patrice “Peaches” Bainbridge had probably greeted the Whites but avoided them after that—too proud to admit they’d been wrong. Ervin and Suzy John were likely to have gone into Mrs. Talbot’s bathroom and prayed for everyone’s safety. Mark and Belinda Fleming likely treated the Whites as though they were Farrah Fawcett and Ryan O’Neal. And if Hoke Robinson was there, he probably shook their hands, welcomed them back to Fervent, and left. He wasn’t a big fan of James’s, but he, too, had always believed they were innocent of Paul Hope’s murder.

Ella explained that when they’d passed Mrs. Talbot’s house on their way to their own—they had borrowed a car from James’s uncle, down in the city—they’d noticed the balloons tied to Mrs. Talbot’s door and the cars parked out front. So they’d stopped to see what was going on.

Syl’s face must have betrayed her, because James said, “We know, we know. You guys weren’t expecting us to move back here so soon after getting out.”

If Syl had thought there was the slightest chance that James and Ella would ever be released from prison, she would have never sat Morgan down and told him the secret she had sworn to keep. As she stood there, looking at the Whites, she felt as though the guilt would chew her out of existence. She wanted James and Ella gone, away from her door.

Ella fanned herself with her hand.

“Sylvia, do you have a few minutes?”

If GiGi and RJ hadn’t been there, Syl might have told Ella no and asked the Whites not to return to her home. But the children would later accuse her of being rude, and they’d certainly ask questions she didn’t want to answer. So Syl opened the door, stepped aside, and invited them in.