Jason Mott’s 2025 novel, People Like Us, is a work of metafiction that blends literary fiction with semi-autobiographical elements. The book follows two parallel storylines: One features a first-person narrator, a Black author who flees to Europe on a book tour after receiving a mysterious death threat in America. The other follows Soot, another Black author who uses a form of psychological time travel to navigate his grief following his daughter’s death by suicide. The novel explores The Psychological Scars of Systemic Violence, The Search for Belonging as a Marginalized People, and Storytelling as a Means of Survival.

Jason Mott is the author of several novels, including Hell of a Book, which won the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction. People Like Us directly engages with Mott’s own career, as its narrator also wins the prestigious award, blurring the line between author and character. The novel also features the return of “The Kid,” a character from Hell of a Book, creating an intertextual link between Mott’s works. Set against the backdrop of pervasive gun violence in the United States and the historical tradition of Black expatriation to Europe, the novel interrogates whether escape from America’s social and cultural wounds is truly possible.

This guide refers to the 2025 Dutton edition.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide feature depictions of graphic violence, death by suicide, suicidal ideation, mental illness, child death, racism, substance use, cursing, and death.

Language Note: This guide quotes and obscures Mott’s use of the n-word.

Plot Summary

The narrative begins with Soot, a 44-year-old Black author, arriving in Minneapolis to speak at a college, reeling from a recent student tragedy. Soot’s public history of losing his father and daughter has made him a figure sought after for his insights on grief.

The perspective shifts to a first-person narrator, a persona of the author, who recounts a recent summer of social optimism that ultimately faded. He tells a story of being in Los Angeles, where he is attacked in an alley by an older Black man named John J. Remus. After inspecting the narrator’s teeth, Remus calmly announces his intention to kill him. The narrative frame pulls back to show the narrator on a plane to Europe, relating this story to a fellow passenger. He is traveling for a book tour, partly to escape Remus’s threat, and he passes the time by pretending to be other famous Black authors, such as Ta-Nehisi Coates.

In a parallel storyline, Soot visits his ex-wife, Tasha, in Toronto. Her home is filled with photos of their deceased daughter, Mia. Soot explains his belief that he can travel through time to relive moments of his life. He tells Tasha he has reviewed their past and concluded they were good parents, not at fault for Mia’s death by suicide. Tasha is skeptical and urges him to leave their former home before his grief consumes him.

The narrator recounts winning the National Book Award, which he calls “The Big One.” His agent, Sharon, informs him that a wealthy French billionaire, whom the narrator nicknames Frenchie, is funding an all-expenses-paid European book tour. Sharon describes Europe as a mythical safe haven, emphasizing its better treatment of Black people and lack of gun violence. Believing Remus’s threat is real, the narrator buys a pistol and learns how to smuggle it overseas before flying to Milan.

Back in Minnesota, Soot attends a faculty dinner where he is confronted by David, a Black professor who accuses him of capitalizing on the college’s recent gun tragedy In the bathroom, David’s anger gives way to grief. Soot joins him in his pain, and the two men engage in a call-and-response, creating a sacred space for their shared, racialized sorrow.

In Milan, the narrator is met by a massive, Black Scottish man he nicknames “The Goon,” who drives him to Frenchie’s villa. There, the narrator is stunned to see “The Kid,” an imaginary boy from a previous book tour, now a real young man of 18 named Dylan. Dylan, who works for Frenchie, pretends not to know the narrator.

The narrator meets Frenchie, who shows him priceless unpublished works by James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, and Nina Simone. Frenchie explains his belief that America is in irreversible decline and offers the narrator millions of dollars to live in Europe and write books preserving the memory of the old America, on the condition that he never return.

The European tour begins in Pordenone, Italy. At a book festival, the narrator is unsettled by a woman who repeatedly asks if he loves America and by a shadowy figure who resembles Remus. Later, Dylan enters a catatonic state after the narrator confronts a Black Italian waitress he insists is American. In the bathroom, Remus appears and stabs the narrator in the stomach.

Soot, meanwhile, travels back to a memory of visiting 16-year-old Mia in Toronto. They encounter a woman named Vivian who is experiencing suicidal ideations. Soot panics, believing this is the moment Mia begins to consider death by suicide herself.

The narrator recovers in Frenchie’s private hospital wing. He reunites with Kelly, an undertaker from his past who now lives in Italy to escape the constant death of young people in the US. She joins the tour. On the road to Paris, The Goon insists on firing the narrator’s gun, and the loud shots traumatize Dylan. In Paris, they meet with other prominent Black authors who discuss Europe as an escape from American racism. The conversation causes Dylan to have a mental health crisis over his sense of homelessness, triggering another catatonic episode just as Remus appears.

Soot’s memories and his present in Minnesota blur. He delivers his speech, telling the story of Mia’s birth and emphasizing her need to heal the world’s pain, which he believes led to her death. Afterward, a young Black student thanks him for “being weird,” and Soot breaks down in tears.

In Paris, instead of killing the narrator, Remus helps him carry the unconscious Dylan to a medical center. Frenchie has the group helicoptered to his Paris mansion, where Dylan remains in a coma for months. During this time, the narrator, Kelly, and The Goon form a close-knit family, creating their own isolated paradise. The narrator accepts Frenchie’s offer to stay in Europe forever.

Dylan awakens from his coma reliving a school shooting in a traumatic nightmare. Soon after, Remus appears for a final confrontation. As Remus charges, the narrator fires his gun. The bullet passes through a glass door and strikes Dylan, who has just appeared on the other side. Remus insists that running is useless, as the narrator himself has brought violence and death with him. Desperate, the narrator flees to a bridge over the Seine and tries to throw the gun into the river, but it hangs impossibly in the air.

The final chapters reveal the book’s meta-narrative structure. The entire first-person narrative is a fiction being told by the author persona, and the character of Soot is part of this larger fiction he has created. The author reveals the frame for the novel: He met a terrified 16-year-old Black American girl at a croissant bar on the Seine who was overcome by her fear of school shootings. In response, he told her the story that constitutes the book, not as a solution, but as a shared narrative to help find connection over mutual grief and understanding of violence.