Out of the Night that Covers Me

Out of the Night that Covers Me is a young adult historical novel by Pat Cunningham Devoto about John McMillan whose mother dies suddenly when he is eight years old, leaving him alone and destitute. John finds himself living on his aunt's tenant farm until fate brings him to a place called The Bend. There he meets Tuway, a black man who helps other impoverished black people make new lives for themselves in Chicago. The book provides a backdrop for the struggle of one boy alone in the world, and his relationships to various curious characters in the Jim Crow south.

The novel begins with the story of young John, who lives with his widowed mother in a comfortable home in northern Alabama. John has appeared before in Devoto's fiction, in the novel My Last Days as Roy Rogers, where he was portrayed as an over-protected eight-year-old boy doted on by his nervous mother. This novel picks up after the death of John's mother in the middle of the 1950s. Left an orphan, John is eventually taken in by his mother's sister, who lives farther south in the Black Belt of Alabama.

Once he arrives at his aunt's home, John is disturbed and puzzled to find that she lives in abject poverty, as a tenant farmer in a hovel of a house with no running water or electricity. In the small town of Lower Peach Tree, John knows nobody, and though his Aunt Nelda is relatively kind to him, John is subjected to brutal treatment by his Uncle Luther. Uncle Luther is an alcoholic, and he sees John as just another laborer to contribute his body and soul to the farm – Luther forces John to hoe cotton for so long in the heat that his skin blisters and his eyes swell shut. When John protests, he is beaten with a belt, and all of his worldly possessions are sold off. The money, of course, goes toward Uncle Luther's alcohol.



However, John finds hope soon after arriving in Lower Peach Tree when a kind man named “Judge” Byron Vance takes him under his wing. Vance hires John to work on his property and to do minor secretarial work. Vance, the president of a local bank, is a controversial figure among whites in town, because he provides loans at a reasonable rate to local sharecroppers. Under the guidance of Vance, John also meets Tuway, a black man and Vance’s right-hand man, who seems to be involved in some kind of scheme to help black people trapped in a brutal sharecropping system escape to Chicago.

Eventually, John finds himself in the small black settlement of The Bend, where he will join Tuway on a journey to Chicago in order to escape the brutality and persecution of the South. However, John's story doesn't end there. As he prepares to leave for Chicago with Tuway, John finds himself in the midst of a controversy that has been building for years. His role in this controversy will change the opinions and perceptions of people around the world, and the lives of John, Tuway, and many more.

Devoto creates a Southern coming of age story steeped in the history of the years just before the Civil Rights Movement and the way that black people from a variety of circumstances found ways to overcome the lousy hands they were dealt as persecuted people in a volatile America.



Pat Cunningham Devoto is a native Alabamian, whose family has lived in and around the town of Florence since the 1820s. Devoto received a bachelor’s degree in secondary education from the University of Tennessee, and now she splits her time between Alabama and Atlanta, Georgia. She is the author of five novels: The Team, On Tripoli Circle, My Last Days as Roy Rogers, Out of the Night that Covered Me, and The Summer We Got Saved. She has been a featured author in Southern Living and was a featured Alabama author for Cullman City Schools, among other awards and honors.