The Devil Takes You Home

The Devil Takes You Home is a novel by the American writer Gabino Iglesias, published in 2022. It is a crime story with a supernatural streak, written in a mix of English and Spanish, and it won the Bram Stoker Award and the Shirley Jackson Award for best novel.

Mario is a father in Texas whose four-year-old daughter, Anita, is diagnosed with leukaemia. The treatment is expensive, his job and his health insurance fall away, and Anita does not respond well to the chemotherapy. Mario borrows money he cannot repay, and a former colleague now dealing drugs offers him a way to clear it.

The work is killing, and Mario takes it, paid in cash for each job. Once the first murder is behind him the novel shows how quickly the violence compounds: Anita dies, his marriage ends, and the ordinary life he was trying to protect is already out of reach.

A final job, robbing a cartel's cash shipment, is offered as a way to settle everything at once. Iglesias writes the book in a barrio-noir register, letting the supernatural intrude on a story that is already about money, grief and what a man will do for them.