Titus Crown

Titus Crown—the first Black sheriff of Charon County, Virginia—is the main character in All the Sinners Bleed. Titus is a large, athletic man in his mid-thirties who has a “question-mark-shaped burn scar on his belly” (8) from his encounter with a white supremacist named Red DeCrain. Prior to the main events of the novel, Titus grew up in Charon with his parents—Albert and Helen—and his younger brother, Marquis. As an adolescent, Titus lost his mother to scleroderma—a disorder that “turned her muscles to bones” (180). In the wake of Helen’s death, Albert was not emotionally capable of raising his sons in a supportive and loving manner; he drank heavily until eventually finding relative peace in the Church. Titus played the role of caretaker to Marquis, who later accuses him of trying to “fix everything” (140). Titus left Charon County to accept a job with...