Godshot : a novel

An explosive literary debut about a young woman coming into her own power in the face of religious extremism, addiction, sexual abuse, and abandonment, Godshot is an unforgettable novel of resilience, poverty, womanhood, and strength found where you least expect itGodshot is propulsive and heart-breaking and bursting with sentences to slay you, to make you gasp with how Chelsea Bieker renders detail. Bieker is a writer who gives Flannery O’Connor’s Gothic parables a Californian twist. Her fiction has echoes of Claire Vaye Watkins and Lauren Groff, Marilynne Robinson and Cormac McCarthy, and yet her voice is so entirely her own.Godshot effortlessly explores the repression of female sexuality, motherhood (and motherloss), climate change, poverty, and the controlling power of cult mentality through the world of Lacey May, our indelible 14-year-old protagonist growing up in the dried-up town of Peaches, CA.Lacey May has only known two things: her life before Pastor Vern made the rain come to Peaches, and her life after, and her life before was far worse. But when at 14 she receives her “assignment” from the Church, along with all the other newly fertile young women of the congregation, she finally begins to question whether the glitter raining down in church is really from the heavens, or from the hand of Pastor Vern’s daughter in the rafters.Bieker is a supremely talented world-builder with a flair for visual details; the world of Godshot is a barren, impoverished town of baptisms conducted with off-brand Cola, front lawns painted neon green, a magenta hearse with a casket still inside, a bright yellow bathing suit with worn elastic, a machine gun painted gold. It's rare to find someone who is so good on the sentence level, and someone who is also so invested in character and story.For fans of all-too-real explorations of the way women’s bodies are policed and controlled, like Women Talking; novels that capture the relationships between mothers and daughters, like White Oleander; and unforgettable young protagonists, like History of Wolves. This "fiercely written and endlessly readable" novel of a teenage girl in thrall to a magnetic?and terrifying?preacher who promises to save her dying town is "a godsend" ( Entertainment Weekly ). Drought has settled on the town of Peaches, California. The area of the Central Valley where fourteen-year-old Lacey May and her alcoholic mother live was once an agricultural paradise. Now it's an environmental disaster, a place of cracked earth and barren raisin farms. In their desperation, residents have turned to a cult leader named Pastor Vern for guidance. He promises, through secret "assignments," to bring the rain everybody is praying for. Lacey has no reason to doubt the pastor. But then her life explodes in a single unimaginable act of abandonment: her mother, exiled from the community for her sins, leaves Lacey and runs off with a man she barely knows. Abandoned and distraught, Lacey May moves in with her widowed grandma, Cherry, who is more concerned with her taxidermy mouse collection than her own granddaughter. As Lacey May endures the increasingly appalling acts of men who want to write all the rules and begins to uncover the full extent of Pastor Vern's shocking plan to bring fertility back to the land, she decides she must go on a quest to find her mother no matter what it takes. With her only guidance coming from the romance novels she reads and the unlikely companionship of the women who knew her mother, she must find her own way through unthinkable circumstances. Possessed of an unstoppable plot and a brilliantly soulful voice, Godshot is a book of grit and humor and heart, a debut novel about female friendship and resilience, mother-loss and motherhood, and seeking salvation in unexpected places. It introduces a writer who gives Flannery O'Connor's Gothic parables a Californian twist and who emerges with a miracle that is all her own. "[A] haunting?debut . . . This is a harrowing?tale, which Bieker smartly writes through the lens of a teenager on the cusp of understanding the often fraught relationship between religion and sexuality . . . It's a timely and disturbing portrait of how easily men can take advantage of vulnerable women?and the consequences sink in more deeply with each page."?Annabel Gutterman,? Time "Drawn in brilliant, bizarre detail?baptism in warm soda, wisdom from romance novels?Lacey's twin crises of faith and femininity tangle powerfully. Fiercely written and endlessly readable, a novel like this is a godsend. A-."?Mary Sollosi, Entertainment Weekly "[An] absolute masterpiece . . . Imagine if Annie Proulx wrote something like White Oleander crossed with Geek Love or Cruddy , and then add cults, God, motherhood, girlhood, class, deserts, witches, the divinity of women . . . Terrifying, resplendent, and profoundly moving, this book will leave you changed." ?T Kira Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls “Imagine if Annie Proulx wrote something like White Oleander crossed with Geek Love or Cruddy , and then add cults, God, motherhood, girlhood, class, deserts, witches, the divinity of women . . . Terrifying, resplendent, and profoundly moving, this book will leave you changed." —T Kira Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls Drought has settled on the town of Peaches, California. The area of the Central Valley where fourteen–year–old Lacey May and her alcoholic mother live was once an agricultural paradise. Now it’s an environmental disaster, a place of cracked earth and barren raisin farms. In their desperation, residents have turned to a cult leader named Pastor Vern for guidance. He promises, through secret “assignments,” to bring the rain everybody is praying for. Lacey has no reason to doubt the pastor. But then her life explodes in a single unimaginable act of abandonment: her mother, exiled from the community for her sins, leaves Lacey and runs off with a man she barely knows. Abandoned and distraught, Lacey May moves in with her widowed grandma, Cherry, who is more concerned with her taxidermy mouse collection than her own granddaughter. As Lacey May endures the increasingly appalling acts of men who want to write all the rules and begins to uncover the full extent of Pastor Vern’s shocking plan to bring fertility back to the land, she decides she must go on a quest to find her mother no matter what it takes. With her only guidance coming from the romance novels she reads and the unlikely companionship of the women who knew her mother, she must find her own way through unthinkable circumstances. Possessed of an unstoppable plot and a brilliantly soulful voice, Godshot is a book of grit and humor and heart, a debut novel about female friendship and resilience, mother–loss and motherhood, and seeking salvation in unexpected places. It introduces a writer who gives Flannery O’Connor’s Gothic parables a Californian twist and who emerges with a miracle that is all her own. “[A] haunting debut . . . This is a harrowing tale, which Bieker smartly writes through the lens of a teenager on the cusp of understanding the often fraught relationship between religion and sexuality . . . It's a timely and disturbing portrait of how easily men can take advantage of vulnerable women—and the consequences sink in more deeply with each page."—Annabel Gutterman, Time “Drawn in brilliant, bizarre detail—baptism in warm soda, wisdom from romance novels—Lacey's twin crises of faith and femininity tangle powerfully. Fiercely written and endlessly readable, a novel like this is a godsend. A–.”—Mary Sollosi, Entertainment Weekly Imagine if Annie Proulx wrote something like#160; White Oleander #160;crossed with#160; Geek Love #160;or#160; Cruddy , and then add cults, God, motherhood, girlhood, class, deserts, witches, the divinity of women . . . Terrifying, resplendent, and profoundly moving, this book will leave you changed." T Kira Madden, author of#160; Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls Drought has settled on the town of Peaches, California. The area of the Central Valley where fourteenyearold Lacey May and her alcoholic mother live was once an agricultural paradise. Now its an environmental disaster, a place of cracked earth and barren raisin farms. In their desperation, residents have turned to a cult leader named Pastor Vern for guidance. He promises, through secret assignments, to bring the rain everybody is praying for. Lacey has no reason to doubt the pastor. But then her life explodes in a single unimaginable act of abandonment: her mother, exiled from the community for her sins, leaves Lacey and runs off with a man she barely knows. Abandoned and distraught, Lacey May moves in with her widowed grandma, Cherry, who is more concerned with her taxidermy mouse collection than her own granddaughter. As Lacey May endures the increasingly appalling acts of men who want to write all the rules and begins to uncover the full extent of Pastor Verns shocking plan to bring fertility back to the land, she decides she must go on a quest to find her mother no matter what it takes. With her only guidance coming from the romance novels she reads and the unlikely companionship of the women who knew her mother, she must find her own way through unthinkable circumstances. Possessed of an unstoppable plot and a brilliantly soulful voice, Godshot is a book of grit and humor and heart, a debut novel about female friendship and resilience, motherloss and motherhood, and seeking salvation in unexpected places. It introduces a writer who gives Flannery OConnors Gothic parables a Californian twist and who emerges with a miracle that is all her own. [A] haunting debut . . . This is a harrowing tale, which Bieker smartly writes through the lens of a teenager on the cusp of understanding the often fraught relationship between religion and sexuality . . . It's a timely and disturbing portrait of how easily men can take advantage of vulnerable womenand the consequences sink in more deeply with each page."Annabel Gutterman, Time Drawn in brilliant, bizarre detailbaptism in warm soda, wisdom from romance novelsLacey's twin crises of faith and femininity tangle powerfully. Fiercely written and endlessly readable, a novel like this is a godsend. A.Mary Sollosi, Entertainment Weekly