BookBrowse Reviews When the Harvest Comes by Denne Michele Norris

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Davis and Everett are in love but soon discover, once family secrets come to light, that love can't paper over childhood trauma.

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Breathtaking in its simplicity and elegance, When the Harvest Comes is a story about love, rejection, and queer identity. The novel opens with Davis and Everett about to be married in the privileged enclave of Montauk beach, where Everett's parents own a home. In such luxurious surroundings, Davis is sentimental, remembering who is missing: Adina, his mother. She died when he was five. "I need my mom to tell me I'm making the right choices." Old fears creep in, unfettered. Like that he may not be enough for Everett, who has been married before. Perhaps Everett will eventually toss him aside for someone who is less effete or someone who is white.

A gay black twenty-something from Cleveland, Davis has struggled for acceptance and incubated resentment because of a judgmental father. With Everett as a partner, he finally has privilege that at times mutes the anxiety he has nurtured for most of his life.

"...people like me? We don't get the guy. We don't end up married with 2.5 children and a white picket fence and matching SUVs...No matter how many times the guy tells us he loves us, he leaves us."

Regardless of the depth of the relationship, or its authenticity, Davis, a Juilliard-trained viola musician, was never previously invited to meet the friends of those he was dating or their parents or relatives, and even though Everett's family adores him, the shame of past exclusions has been hard to forget and forgive. The world has judged him by his appearance and mannerisms, by his blackness and by what often goes unsaid: a diminutive man lacks the masculinity required to be taken seriously.

If every novel begins with a question, When the Harvest Comes has a simple one: What if Davis knew his father was coming to the wedding even though he wasn't invited? What if he knew his father was trying to erase their cold war of estrangement? What if he knew that the night before, his father was on a highway in western Pennsylvania driving the car Davis had as a teenager and he smashed it into a tree and it tumbled down a hill?

Growing up, Davis was known as Sunny Boy. His father, the Reverend, noted he was born on the sunniest day of the year. That couldn't protect him when his mother died and he suffered through night terrors. As a teenager, Davis kept his lust for boys under wraps until one day the Reverend spied his son and a white boy named Jake having sex. The Reverend couldn't control his full-throated rage.

"This was unacceptable. He had not raised his son to submit to any man except his father and his Father. He didn't raise Davis to be touched by a man, let alone a white boy, as though that boy possessed him, dominated him, had any claim to his body."

The way the scene is written, the Reverend is reminiscent of a volcano before eruption, when it bulges quietly, and the crust trembles. He turns away in silent retreat and makes a beeline for his office and starts drinking and listens to a rainstorm. But the storm brewing outside and its soothing musicality is no match for the scorn brewing inside him. Immediately after Davis's teenaged lover leaves the house, the Reverend unleashes his rage with a belt, punishing Davis's flesh, yelling, "you think God gave you a pussy, don't you?"

Denne Michele Norris's debut novel is something to behold. Its parts are just as lovely as their sum. While the wedding is a vehicle to build drama about a relationship and a marriage that begins with the best intentions — being in love, having a person — Norris also digs into the forbidden parts of childhood with parents who lack understanding or empathy. As much as I enjoyed the wedding plot, the ensuing marriage story was even more complex and stirring and I was captivated by where Norris took the characters' emotions, from jealousy, to hurt, to rejection.

Caribbean novelist Jamaica Kincaid once suggested that it was her duty as a writer to make everyone a little less happy. Kincaid's stories are about the spectrum of life's difficulties. This is the quiet theme here in Norris's novel. Marriages between men may be mired in challenges primarily because of the damage from years earlier, the pain that both fathers and society inflict (see Beyond the Book).

What really works and gives the story such weight is that Norris builds the narrative of the perfect white father — affluent, successful, accepting — and then dismantles it. And she builds the narrative of the withholding black father — religious, intolerant, judgmental — and then dismantles that. These men, Christopher and John, are shown in ways flattering and unflattering, as similar but incompatible. Their deep flaws shape the insecurities of their sons.

As for the rest of the characters — Everett's mother Charlotte, his brothers Conner (his twin, younger by thirty-two minutes) and Caleb, and Davis's doctor sister Olivia — they seem to defend the right of gay men to be gay men. Yet it's not clear if this acceptance is limited to family or given to gay men at large.

I particularly liked how Norris plots her story, how patient she is and the restraint she uses. Included in the narrative is Davis's talent with the viola, which she spends time educating the reader about, and no, the viola is not just a baby violin.

The story elements of When the Harvest Comes feel contemporary, with mention of Trump. Embedded within is a strong message about facing your past demons. It's a beautiful, heartbreaking novel and inspiring, too, for what it reminds us about marriage conflicts and life. Marital happiness depends upon vulnerability. Sharing sorrows is how you manage a painful past and begin the hard work of loving yourself.

This review first ran in the June 4, 2025 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.