*FINALIST for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction*
*WINNER of the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award*
*WINNER of the 2020 Story Prize*
*WINNER of the 2020 L.A. Times Book Prize, Art Seidenbaum Award for
First Fiction*
"Beguiling." --The New Yorker
"Tender, fierce, proudly black and beautiful, these stories will sneak
inside you and take root." --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Triumphant." --Publishers Weekly
"Cheeky, insightful, and irresistible." --Ms. Magazine
"This collection marks the emergence of a bona fide literary
treasure." --Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Full of lived-in humanity, warmth, and compassion." --Pittsburgh
Current
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies explores the raw and tender places
where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires and pursue a
momentary reprieve from being good. The nine stories in this collection
feature four generations of characters grappling with who they want to
be in the world, caught as they are between the church's double
standards and their own needs and passions.
There is fourteen-year-old Jael, who has a crush on the preacher's wife.
At forty-two, Lyra realizes that her discomfort with her own body stands
between her and a new love. As Y2K looms, Caroletta's "same time next
year" arrangement with her childhood best friend is tenuous. A serial
mistress lays down the ground rules for her married lovers. In the dark
shadows of a hospice parking lot, grieving strangers find comfort in
each other.
With their secret longings, new love, and forbidden affairs, these
church ladies are as seductive as they want to be, as vulnerable as they
need to be, as unfaithful and unrepentant as they care to be, and as
free as they deserve to be.
