History Literature / LovecraftCountry

* HealingMagicIsTheHardest: When Ruby asks Caleb why he can't use magic to heal Delilah, he said healing is a complex magic that he can't do and the healing a ritual has a high failure rate that could kill her or worse.

In 2017 it was announced that Creator/JordanPeele would be adapting the novel into an [[Series/LovecraftCountry HBO television series]]. The series is set to be released on August 2020.

* InTheBlood: Talent for magic runs in families, and some bloodlines are more powerful than others. [[spoiler: The reason the Braithewhites are interested in Atticus is that he is the last living descendant of Titus Braithewhite, one of the most powerful sorcerers ever.]]

* GeniusBonus: Adah's Book of Days includes an accounting of the amount of money she figured her former master owed her, both for her labor and the "insults" he visited upon her, which she calculated using Bible verses. For example she charged $27.26 for each time her master whipped her, due to Matthew 27:26 being about Jesus being whipped. For another unspecified (although apparently common) insult she consulted the book of Deuteronomy and charged $22.25: Deuteronomy 22:25 involves the punishment for raping a married woman.

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: At the end of the story [[spoiler: Caleb Braithwaite has been stripped of his powers and ran out of Chicago]], but what does this mean for [[spoiler:Dell, who was being kept in a magically induced coma by him and being used as raw material for Ruby's transformations into Hillary?]]

* PoliticallyIncorrectVillain: Given the time period and setting, practically everyone is this ''except'' for the AffablyEvil BigBad (who isn't above using racist individuals and groups to get what he wants, but personally doesn't seem to care about anyone's skin color).

* PoliceBrutality: All police officers in the story are all too prone to resort to physical violence during their interactions with the public, ''specially'' if the person they're dealing with is black.

* MamaBear: Ida was willing to [[spoiler:murder Hippolyta via alien predator]] on the off chance that she might unwittingly led the ghost of Hiram Winthrop to her daughter Pearl.

* LovecraftCountry: Obviously featured as a setting, and introduced into the story via a somewhat humorous DoubleSubversion. Atticus initially thinks his father was taken to the (fictional in and out of universe) Arkham, Massachusetts, but then his uncle reminds me that ThisIsReality and notes that Montrose actually wrote he was in Ard''ham'', Massachusetts (real in-universe but fictional out-of-universe), which turns out to be just as sinister and benighted.

* ExplainExplainOhCrap: Early in the novel, the characters go to a restaurant that had been recommended in the Safe Negro Travel Guide for friendly and welcoming service from the white owners and otherwise good amenities. However, when they go there, they are met with silence and hostility, and as a seemingly minor difference, everything is newly whitewashed rather than the old red brick. Atticus is suspicious from the outset, and after noticing some signs of scorch marks, Atticus reminds his Uncle George of a factoid about how the White House got its name from being repainted after being torched by the British during the War of 1812. At this point, George understands Atticus' meaning and has an OhCrap reaction, realizing that after the last visit, the place had been torched by a racist mob with [[InferredHolocaust likely fatal consequences for the former owners]], and the new owners are coming for them.

* AsLongAsItSoundsForeign: Lovecraft's incorrect naming of the Mad Arab Abdul Alhazred is lampshaded by Abdullah Mohammed, the head of the local Prince Hall Freemasons, and by Montrose, Atticus' father, who claims it's just "a white guy from Rhode Island trying to be funny."

* BrokenPedestal: Invoked. When Atticus was a child, Montrose disapproved of his reading the stories of Creator/HPLovecraft, and took great pleasure in damaging Atticus' view of the man by showing him Lovecraft's "comedic" poem "On the Creation of N----s."

* CorruptHick: Unsurprisingly given the period and setting, Atticus and his family as well as anyone else traveling as part of the Safe Negro Travel Guide meet these. These range from police officers who stop and harass for a pretext to police officers who will kill any African-American who enters their county.

Lovecraft Country is a 2016 novel from Matt Ruff. Set in the Jim Crow era, it stars [[ShoutOut the aptly named]] Atticus Turner as a 22 year old African American army veteran, whose father Montrose goes missing in Main/LovecraftCountry. Despite the threats posed by a [[TheOrder secret order]] hiding in a village of questionable temporal geography with [[BlobMonster shoggoths]] roaming about the woods, Ruff effectively uses the CosmicHorrorStory as a foil to show [[HumansAreTheRealMonsters just how horrific racism can be]].

In 2017 it was announced that Creator/JordanPeele would be adapting the novel into an HBO television series. The series is set to be released on August 2020.

* SelfMadeOrphan: [[spoiler:Caleb Braithwhite sabotages his father ritual in order to kill him and the entire Ardham lodge of the Order]].

* WeAREStrugglingTogether: After Titus Braithwaite's dead, the Sons of Adam splintered into dozens of lodges, all competing and fighting each other for every scrap of arcane knowledge they could get their hands on.

In 2017 it was announced that Creator/JordanPeele would be adapting the novel into an HBO television series.

** [[spoiler:Lancaster has no scruples about putting a lethal curse on a 12 year-old boy just to send a message to Caleb.]]

* WouldHurtAChild: [[spoiler:Lancaster has no scruples about putting a lethal curse on a 12 year-old boy just to send a message to Caleb.]]

* ShootTheShaggyDog: Ida's choice to [[spoiler:remain behind on the extra-galactic planet she's been trapped in for 20 years to prevent the ghost of Hiram Winthrop from using her to track her daughter Pearl]], becomes this later in the book when it is revealed that [[spoiler:Pearl was already dead. She, along with her white husband and child were murdered by a white mob for being a mixed family over 10 years ago.]]

* WeAREStrugglingTogether: After Titus Braithwaite's dead, the Sons of Adam splintered into dozens of lodges, all competing and fighting each other for every scrap of arcane knowledge they could get their hands on.

* LaserGuidedKarma: Letitia comes into some money at one point and uses it to purchase a home and become a landlord. This home is in a predominantly white neighborhood, and the neighbors are willing to commit serious acts of vandalism and threaten her life if it means scaring her and her tenants away. What they don't know is that the house is haunted by a malevolent ghost who becomes very violent whenever someone attempts to alter the home. [[spoiler: They all barely survive, but their criminal intents were so blatantly obvious that the largely white police force eagerly arrest and charge them.]]
** Later on, Ruby loses her job because the daughter of the owner of a hotel she works at frames her for stealing an expensive pair of earrings from a guest. To better illustrate just how vile a woman this is, the next time Ruby sees her she starts a screaming match with a woman who's also got eyes for the man she's in love with, and the woman lies about them being engaged in order to claim the moral high ground in the argument. She's also wearing the stolen earrings. [[spoiler: Ruby has been given a potion that changes her appearance into that of a beautiful white woman, and she manages to frame the woman for stealing from the store.]] The woman then assaults a cop and gets violently apprehended by several officers.