There's no shortage of potential stumbling blocks for an author commandeering a 14-year-old narrator. The miracle of Chelsea Bieker's Godshot, then, is not just that Bieker masters young Lacey May's voice, but that she makes every moment of Lacey's unbelievable life feel crisp, raw and deeply, achingly real. And Lacey does not have a simple story. She lives in the California town of Peaches, where drought has destroyed the raisins her neighbors rely on. Sprouting up instead is a cult led by the grotesque Pastor Vern, who considers himself a modern messiah and promises to bring back the rain through "assignments" to his church members. Sheltered Lacey is one of his targets, and she falls under his spell shortly after her mother disappears with a man she met through a nearby phone-sex business. Desperate to find her mother--and growing into motherhood herself--Lacey decides to investigate the women who run this business, in the hope of bringing her family together again.
Godshot is a monumental exploration of faith, family and what it means to be a woman in a strange, cruel, wondrous world. It is also filled with the sort of imagery that will haunt readers for weeks afterward: baptisms in bathtubs filled with soda; "God glitter" sprinkling down from a church ceiling; a horde of taxidermy critters dressed in handsewn outfits; the "glassy dark blue worlds" in an infant's eyes. Bieker has pulled off a stunning debut, revealing a deep-rooted talent that will, no doubt, bear more fruit. --Lauren Puckett, freelance writer