Take Five: Desmond Hall and BETTER MUST COME

We’re delighted to bring you an interview with author and WU contributor Desmond Hall, and a sneak peek at his upcoming release, BETTER MUST COME. What’s the pitch?

Barely Missing Everything meets American Street in this fiercely evocative, action-packed young adult thriller that looks at the darker side of light-filled Jamaica and how a tragedy and missing drug money helplessly entangle the lives of two teens who want to change their fate.

The book is gaining a lot of buzz, including: “Hall presents an expansive exploration of how class and privilege intersect within Jamaican culture through the eyes of teens in this intimately narrated tale told via Deja and Gabriel’s dual POVs.“–Publishers Weekly; and this: “Criminal intrigue and the unique vulnerabilities of Caribbean youth make for high-stakes hijinks with a lot of heart.”–Kirkus Reviews

Want to hear more? Read on!

Q1: What’s the premise of your new book?

Desmond Hall: BETTER MUST COME is an evocative, action-packed YA thriller that looks at the darker side of light-filled Jamaica and how tragedy and missing drug money helplessly entangle the lives of two teens who want to change their fate.

Deja is a “Barrel Girl” – one of the Jamaican kids who gets barrels (containers filled with clothes, food and other goods not available on island) from parents who’ve left them to go to the US and Canada to make more money. Gabriel is caught up in a gang and desperate for a way out. When he meets Deja at a party, he starts looking for a way into her life, and starts wondering if they could be part of each other’s futures.

Then one day, while out fishing, Deja spies a go-fast boat stalled out by some rocks and smeared with blood. On board, a badly wounded man thrusts a bag at her, begging her to deliver it to someone halfway across the island, and not to say a word. She binds his wounds, determined to send help and make good on her promise…not realizing the bag is stuffed with half a million US dollars. Not realizing that the posse Gabriel is in will stop at nothing to get the bag. Or that Gabriel’s and her lives will intersect in a way they never could have imagined as they’re forced to make split-second decisions to save the lives of the ones they love.

Q2: What would you like people to know about the story itself?

DH: A really cool thing about Better Must Come is that it’s a lose retelling of Homer’s Odyssey. Like Odysseus, the Greek warrior, who had to use his wits and courage to find his way home after the Trojan wars, Deja must also use best attributes. They are both warriors of different kinds navigating different times.

Also, the theme of abandonment plays a much larger role in Better Must Come. In the Odyssey, Odysseus abandons his family to go fight in the wars, whereas Deja is abandoned by her mother who leaves to earn money in the “first world”, and then Deja in turn abandons her siblings to go on an odyssey in order to save her family.

What’s also fun, is that readers can find “Easter eggs” throughout the book, as there are characters from the Odyssey that are reimagined in Better Must Come (The cyclops, the witch, the cow, the 3 sirens, etc.)

Q3: What do your characters have to overcome in this story? What challenge do you set before them?

DH: This is a “Golden Fleece” story per Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat book—where a team goes on the road to pursue a certain “prize”, but through the course of the story they learn that the “prize’ they’re seeking is not what is most valuable.

Q4: What unique challenges did this book pose for you, if any?

DH: I used a lot of dramatic irony to put the readers ahead of the characters in Better Must Come. This was especially tricky because there are two POV characters and four major plot lines, and each chapter has a day and time stamp.

So, with the help of my excellent editor, we plotted the story over the process of several drafts to keep both the readers and the characters guessing–even when the readers had an advantage in terms of knowing more about the character’s motivations.

Q5: What has been the most rewarding aspect of having written this book?

DH: What I was most eager to share about Jamaica was the nature of the “runaway crime.” The tourism commercials (some that I used to write, myself) accurately portray the island’s bounty. It’s true that the country is beautiful, and the food is amazing and that there are fantastically friendly people. But at the same time, the country (outside of the tourist areas) is besieged by a crime rate that from year-to-year ranks in the top five in the world, per capita.

This is heartbreaking to me because when I was a child, most people would sleep with their windows open, and doors unlocked. I’m hopeful that shedding a light on this issue, in some small way can help raise awareness of this problem that has to be decisively addressed for the nation to thrive.

Congratulations on your new book, Desmond! Thank you for sharing this great sneak peek today.

WU Community, you can learn more about Desmond’s novel on his website, or by following him on IG, on X, TikTok (@bettermustcome07), or by following the buy-links below. Read on!