Rob Franklin's debut novel, GREAT BLACK HOPE, opens with an episode that happens in "a blip, a breath." In one instant, young David Smith (known to his friends just as Smith) pockets 0.7 grams of cocaine, and seemingly in the next, he's being arrested on drug possession, outside a restaurant in the Hamptons in the waning days of a long, hot and tragic summer.

Smith is, among other things, grieving the mysterious death of his roommate, Elle, the daughter of a prominent Black soul singer, who --- following a similar night out on the town just weeks earlier --- was found washed up on the shores of the Bronx River. Smith has been drinking and using drugs recreationally for years, but Elle's shocking death, along with his arrest, compels him to look at his actions with new eyes.

"[F]or those who enjoy a mix of character exploration and lyrical language, GREAT BLACK HOPE is a debut novel to seek out and savor."

Like Elle, Smith comes from a prominent Black family. His father is an academic and the recently retired president of an HBCU in Atlanta, and his mother is a doctor. His grandmother, inspired by the lynching of a friend to enter her chosen profession, became one of the first Black women lawyers in Texas. Smith himself went to Stanford, and although he now spends his time doing relatively boring work as an analyst for CNVS (pronounced "canvas"), a direct-to-consumer art startup, he feels the weight of his family's expectations on his shoulders.

So, equipped with the best, most well-connected lawyer David Smith Sr. can procure, Smith embarks on a months-long course of AA meetings, therapy sessions and drug tests, all designed to impress the judge and hopefully get the charges expunged from his permanent record. Along the way, however, he's forced to contend with his own and society's preconceptions about addiction in Black communities.

Smith, for whom "drugs had always been less about relief from some intangible pain than an altered relationship to time and to his body," certainly never would have lumped himself in with the crack cocaine addicts who were demonized during the 1980s-era "war on drugs.” He soon recognizes, however, that his own and Elle's grudgingly admitted addiction carries certain connotations that it might not if he was white: "for those who looked like them, that word was a moral failure, a confirmation of society's worst fears. A forfeit of all the tenuous advantages given.”

Smith's arrest, combined with Elle's unsolved death, which propels much of Smith's actions and thoughts, might make it sound like GREAT BLACK HOPE is structured like a mystery or thriller. But readers expecting those elements are likely to be disappointed. The book is much more character-driven, as Smith embarks on a coming-of-age journey that might better be defined as a coming-to-terms. It's not exactly a happy novel, though its later sections do find Smith, who's gay, embarking on a new relationship with a person who has their own complicated relationship with addicts and addiction.

Franklin, who's also a poet, sprinkles his prose with many arresting, even odd, images and phrases that might cause readers to pause. In one section, someone's movements are described as "cattish"; elsewhere, the aftermath of a dinnertime argument is described like this: "the cloth night had been stained by everything said." These uses of language might not resonate with everyone, but for those who enjoy a mix of character exploration and lyrical language, GREAT BLACK HOPE is a debut novel to seek out and savor.