John Grimes turns fourteen in Harlem, struggles with his preacher stepfather, and experiences salvation on the threshing floor of the Temple of the Fire Baptized. Baldwin drew on his own teenage conversion and his complicated relationship with his stepfather. The novel moves through three generations, showing how the Great Migration shaped Black American religious life. The prose is biblical in its rhythms, the church scenes overwhelming in their intensity. Baldwin left the church but never lost its language. This novel is why.