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An entrancing debut about two sisters exiled by their parents when the eldest becomes pregnant
Set in Arco, Idaho, in 1970, Val Brelinski's powerfully affecting first novel tells the story of three sisters: young Frances, gregarious and strong-willed Jory, and moral-minded Grace. Their father, Oren, is a respected member of the community and science professor at the local college. Yet their mother's depression and Grace's religious fervor threaten the seemingly perfect family, whose world is upended when Grace returns from a missionary trip to Mexico and discovers she's pregnant with - she believes - the child of God.
Distraught, Oren sends Jory and Grace to an isolated home at the edge of the town. There, they prepare for the much-awaited arrival of the baby while building a makeshift family that includes an elderly eccentric neighbor and a tattooed social outcast who drives an ice cream truck.
The Girl Who Slept with God is a literary achievement about a family's desperate need for truth, love, purity, and redemption.
"Starred Review. [An] engaging debut...A heartrending portrait of the challenges of accepting and rejecting both faith and family and realizing that decisions aren't always so straightforward." - Library Journal
"[An] intriguing story of a close evangelical Christian family... In her debut novel, Brelinski makes Jory's solitude nearly palpable and dissects the dynamics of family through Jory's life on the fringe of society, and the result is fascinating." - Publishers Weekly
"A soulful exploration of the limits and consequences of familial control." - Kirkus Reviews
"The Girl Who Slept with God is full of passion and compassion. It treats its characters as people in a way few novels can, allowing each of them to be fascinating, full-hearted, noble, confused, brave, fumbling, petty, right and wrong by turns, in a way that feels like life." - Chad Harbach, author of The Art of Fielding
"Val Brelinski manages to make a foreign world utterly familiar with prose that's heartfelt, provocative, and wistful. A striking debut." -Kaui Hart Hemmings, author of The Descendants
"The Girl Who Slept With God is a lushly detailed and immensely compelling portrait of adolescence, Idaho, sisterhood, the 1970s, and the painful, precious mystery of family. Any reader who has ever sought to love someone beyond her understanding will relish this lovely book." - Eleanor Henderson, author of Ten Thousand Saints
"Twinning grace and humor with startling psychological depth, Brelinski's debut novel is bold, sometimes unnerving, and chock full of the moments, insights, and beauty we read for." - Scott Hutchins, author of A Working Theory of Love
"Val Brelinski is a gorgeous writer - compassionate and spare, generous and insightful - and this novel will stay with me for a long time. I loved it." - Molly Antopol, author of The UnAmericans
"Page after page in The Girl Who Slept With God I was reminded of what I cherish most in fiction: the wonder of falling headfirst into a story, of falling for the people in it." - Josh Weil, author of The Great Glass Sea
"The Girl Who Slept With God is a gorgeously harrowing examination of a family facing perils so great everything they know about faith and love is challenged. Val Brelinski is a writer of uncommon precision and empathy, and this novel makes for a brilliant and commanding debut." - Laura van den Berg, author of The Isle of Youth and Find Me
This information about The Girl Who Slept with God was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
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