Design by Nicole Caputo, Catapult, March 2020
GODSHOT
A FINALIST FOR BOTH THE OREGON AND CALIFORNIA BOOK AWARD, LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION’S FIRST NOVEL PRIZE, AND NAMED A BARNES AND NOBLE PICK OF THE MONTH, INDIE NEXT LIST, AN NPR BEST BOOK OF 2020, OPRAH MAGAZINE’S “MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2020”, AND VULTURE’S “BEST NEW BOOK FOR 2020.”
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.
PRAISE:
“An unnerving tour de force.” Elle Magazine
“A spirited debut…”—The New York Times
“[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
“Combining a topsy-turvy plot and a beautifully drawn mother-daughter relationship, Bieker delivers unto us an exquisitely peculiar tale of innocence lost.” O, the Oprah Magazine
“A gritty, gripping tale of girlhood, spirituality, and how salvation comes from the unlikeliest of places.” Esquire
“From start to finish, Bieker’s commanding work holds the reader in the grip of obedience. Moving from blind supplication to measured, loving faith, this is a full throttle debut novel which challenges you to try and put it down while reading.“ —The Observer
“…a narrator you would follow to the ends of the earth.” -Glamour
“Believe me when I say this: Godshot is one of the best debuts that I’ve read in a really long time.” -Real Simple
O, the Oprah Magazine May issue review
Bomb Magazine Review: “Gaining a Self: On Chelsea Bieker’s Godshot”
NPR Interview with Ari Shapiro
Bookforum Interview with Sarah Neilson
Lit Hub Asks: 5 Writers, 7 Questions, No Wrong Answers
Electric Literature Conversations with Leni Zumas
Fully Booked: Kirkus Reviews Podcast
WNYC “All of It” with Alison Stewart
I’m a Writer But…Podcast with Lindsay Hunter and Alex Higley
Otherppl Podcast with Brad Listi