“New Orleans shimmies,” Sussler writes at the outset of her strangely haunting debut: “formed from a swamp into a Creole capital, it’s all sweat and longing, the sweet smell of decay and wild, wild wails.” This is a novel full of longing—and wild wails, for that matter—though not so full of straightforward plot. Here’s what we’re given: Daryl Monroe, our intrepid hero, returns to his backwoods Louisiana home after his mother dies and he’s disinherited by his wealthy father. Turns out Daryl has a plan to set up an illegal smuggling operation to undermine his father, an operation that draws on the talents of his former childhood friend Michael Duvet. Duvet, meanwhile, absolutely does not, in any way, have any resentments about the different opportunities the two boys grew up with or the ways they each put those opportunities to use. But that’s all neither here nor there: The heart of the novel is in Sussler’s narrative voice, which favors a uniquely lyrical style. For the most part, this is a welcome approach: No one else writes like Sussler, the editor-in-chief of BOMB Magazine. But there are parts—and they seem to come more and more often as the novel progresses—where even the simplest, most literal meaning is sacrificed to something more florid. As a reader, you might prefer a time-out to untangle the basics of a given scene: Who else is sitting in the car right now, you might wonder. What day is it? A bit more restraint on Sussler’s part would have served her well.