Two-Step Devil

Quatro (Fire Sermon) reckons with faith and the nature of evil in her daring and disturbing latest. The narrative centers on a 70-year-old man, known as the Prophet, who lives alone in a ramshackle cabin in the hollows of Alabama’s Lookout Mountain, where he carries on dialogues with a shadowy Lucifer-like figure whom he calls Two-Step. When the Prophet spies a girl bound by zip ties in the custody of two sex traffickers, he rescues the 14-year-old, who’s named Michael, and becomes convinced she’s a messenger sent by God. The Prophet carefully tends to Michael as she suffers through opioid withdrawal and later rebuffs her attempts to repay his kindness with sexual favors. Once Michael is well enough, the Prophet sends her to Washington, D.C., with instructions to deliver his divinely inspired message to the White House. But Michael has been harboring a secret from the Prophet, and she embarks on her own course of action. Quatro’s descriptions of child abuse can feel gratuitous, but she poses provocative questions about consent by drawing parallels between Michael’s sex work and Mary’s immaculate conception (“As if obtaining the consent of a fourteen-year-old exonerated Creator of the crime!” Two-Step says). It’s hard to turn away from Quatro’s electrifying vision. Agent: Anna Stein, CAA. (Sept.)