My new book is done. I will now begin the post-novel recovery period where I purge green leftovers from the fridge, watch Ozark again, cry because my self-worth hangs in the balance, and try to remember where the shower is.
I have a few generous friends who’ve offered to read the manuscript—some of whom aren’t even related to me—but I’d be very interested to get a few opinions from readers who don’t suspect the vicious auntie character is based on them.
If you’ve got time to help a girl out, let me know, before I send my naked soul through the gauntlet of the literary agent.
The title of the novel is Places We Ain’t Supposed to Go, and it’s 97K words. Or in the neighborhood of 320 pages.
Short Blurb
When a brilliant young secretary for a modern fundamentalist church is allowed to take courses at a local college, she experiences a funny and dangerous awakening.
More Blurb
Places We Ain’t Supposed to Go is about a bright young woman’s exit from a cultish church. It follows three women from different generations who are entangled with the church, and the book is pillared by seven standalone stories—disturbing, macabre, heroic—of women in the Bible.
Abigail Murdy works as a personal assistant to the fiery pastor of a church in Natagwa, Colorado, where men are invested with absolute authority and women don’t speak, even to pray aloud—because (as Eve’s apple episode proves) women are easy to deceive. Her intelligence may be a gift, but it won’t put a jewel in her eternal crown or help with her divine calling to marriage and motherhood.
Abby has been unable to conceive, so her sympathetic husband allows her to enroll in classes at a nearby university, and she finds herself suddenly living in dual worlds. At school she’s rapacious, wonderstruck, and comically naive. At home, her tiny rebellions begin to threaten both her marriage and job.
Abby discovers that her pastor’s shady investments are behind the church’s financial crisis, and when she’s ultimately forced to choose between her community and her degree, it will be an unexpected alliance that carries her through the open door.
Places We Ain’t Supposed to Go is a book about church secrets, curiosity, and female friendships, both ancient and modern. Friendships that can outlast marriages. Friendships that can take down kings.
Places We Ain’t Supposed to Go is a partially-autobiographcial novel based on a real brand of American fundamentalism with millions of followers, which was featured in the hit Discovery Channel show 19 Kids and Counting, as well as a recent Amazon Prime documentary called Shiny, Happy, People.
I’d love to read, if you’ll have me, and if my absolute flakiness on stuff like this wouldn’t derail anything vital should it rear its head. I am a poor load bearing wall when it comes to this sort of thing—but of course I’m interested.
I would LOVE to beta read this! My background is fundamentalist of the independent Baptist variety + undergrad at Bob Jones University.