Devyn Defoe’s Haunting Sacramento Novel | Sacramento News

Sacramento News Today | 2 Min News | The Daily News Now! · Aug 4, 2026 · 1m

Sacramento’s own Devyn Defoe drops her haunting debut novel Burnside, a gritty magical realism tale that mirrors the city’s smoky, shadowed summers through the eyes of a homeless man who vanishes after injuring a girl—named September for a pinup calendar. Blending Didion’s precision with Vollmann’s sprawl, Defoe channels her dad’s killer tales and local coffee shop lore into a story that feels eerily real. With a Stanford fellowship, a Best American Experimental Writing nod, and part-time bookseller hustle, she’s already rewriting Sacramento’s literary map—one smoke-filled page at a time…