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Published Apr 2020
336 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
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.
BookBrowse Review
Peaches, California, once the raisin capital of the USA, is suffering a severe water shortage. Pastor Vern, who believes himself to be a new incarnation of God (like a brother of Jesus), gained many followers at Gifts of the Spirit Church for bringing the rains back temporarily seven years ago. Lacey May Herd, 14, has just had her first period, which according to Vern means she's ready for her divine mission. But with her alcoholic mother gone AWOL, Lacey is unsure if her newfound sexuality makes her powerful or puts her in danger. Like a cross between The Handmaid's Tale and Gold Fame Citrus, this is a wholly believable, very gritty, speculative novel about repressive religion and transactional sex." - Rebecca Foster
Other Reviews
"Bieker's exploration of the way that poverty and environmental ravishment also add to the subjugation of the female body adds more rich layers to this narrative...A dark, deft first novel about the trauma and resilience of both people and the land they inhabit." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Bieker's debut novel is a vivid and cutting exploration of unconditional female love. It observes how mothers shape daughters, biological or otherwise, and how daughters must ultimately learn to mother themselves. Young readers will admire Lacy May's resilience, moxie, and ability to survive in a world she did not choose." - Booklist (starred review)
"Godshot is a flinty, exemplary novel that celebrates everyday rebellions, demolishing blind religious fervor and unmasking charlatans as it goes." - Foreword Reviews (starred review)
"Delving into patriarchal religious zealotry, Bieker's excellent debut plants themes seen in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale into a realistic California setting that will linger with readers." - Publishers Weekly
"Lacey May's is an irresistible voice, part gullible believer, part whip-smart independent spirit who surprises at every turn. Debut novelist Bieker weaves in the political battles being fought on multiple fronts—climate change, controlling women by controlling their bodies, the intractability of cult-think, through the eyes of a wholly original, strong young woman who fiercely defends her soul against nearly overwhelming odds." - Library Journal
"A nefarious religious cult right out of Gilead, a phone sex line, and a beautifully-rendered mother-daughter relationship—if you're not intrigued already, maybe there's no salvation for you. Think Maria Semple's Where'd You Go Bernadette meets Emma Cline's The Girls." - O, The Oprah Magazine, 1 of the 30 Most Anticipated Books of the Year
"Chelsea Bieker's Godshot is an absolute masterpiece. A truly epic journey through girlhood, divinity, and the blood that binds and divides us, it is a feminist magnum opus of this, or any, time...Terrifying, resplendent, and profoundly moving, this book will leave you changed." - T Kira Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls
"I cried as I finished reading Godshot. It's a novel of rebirth: baptism and heartbreak, daughterhood and motherhood. Lacey May is a yearning, whip-smart, brokenhearted believer, and I miss her now that the novel has ended. Chelsea Bieker has written a wholly real and beautifully written coming-of-age tale that is sure to be an instant classic." - Lindsay Hunter, author of Eat Only When You're Hungry
This information about Godshot 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.
Chelsea Bieker is from California's Central Valley. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writer's Foundation Award and her fiction and essays have been published in Granta, McSweeney's, Catapult magazine, Electric Literature, and Joyland, among other publications. She was awarded a MacDowell Colony fellowship and holds an MFA in creative writing from Portland State University. Godshot is her first novel.
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