In Hell of a Book, an African-American author sets out on a cross-country book tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives Jason Mott's novel and is scaffolding of something much larger and more urgent since  his novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour. Throughout, these characters stories build and build and they converge, they astonish. For while this heartbreaking and magical book entertains and is at once about family, love of parents and children, art and money, there always is the tragic story of a police shooting playing over and over om the news. Who has been killed? who is the kid? Will the author finish his book tour, and what kind of world will he leave behind?