A novel shot through with transcendence

The rain falls on the evil and the good. And sometimes it doesn’t fall at all. The town of Peaches is in a drought. At 14 years old, Lacey May knows she can help bring the rain. But in the Gifts of the Spirit Church, girls must wait until they become women to receive their secret assignments.

And so it begins with blood: an ominous curtain call for a coming-of-age tale set in a crumbling ghost town. Lacey May doesn’t know it, but her life, which once revolved around a beautiful alcoholic mother, has now been overrun by a religious cult.

Godshot, Chelsea Bieker’s debut novel, holds nothing back. Every sentence manages to claw at central truths about motherhood, faith, and power. The pages drip with portent, seducing readers, alternating between dread and hope as the characters swing between thirst and gulping down bottles of cold water.