Synopsis:
When the deacons at Mark Beaver’s Bible Belt church cue up an evangelical horror flick aimed at dramatizing Hell, he figures he'd better get right with God, and soon. Convinced he could die at age seven and spend eternity roasting on a spit in the fiery furnace of Hades, he promptly gets Saved. But once adolescence hits, the Straight and Narrow becomes a tight squeeze.
But Suburban Gospel offers more than a look inside Bible Belt suburbia, circa Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority―it’s a tale of faith and flesh. Beaver invites us into a world filled with Daisy Duke fantasies and Prince posters, Nerf Hoops and Atari joysticks, raggedy Camaros and the neon light of strip malls. As much about the adolescent heart as the evangelical mind, the story explores similar emotional terrain as coming-of-age classics like Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life and Mary Karr's Cherry. Suburban Gospel is a tale of growing up Baptist, all right―but also of just growing up.
About the Author:
Mark Beaver’s prose has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including North American Review, Gulf Coast, Ninth Letter, Southeast Review, storySouth, Tampa Review, Third Coast, Louisville Review, Crazyhorse, Fugue, and elsewhere. In addition, his work has been shortlisted for the Best American Essays series. A graduate of the MFA program at UNC-Greensboro, he lives with his wife and daughters in his native Atlanta. Suburban Gospel is his first book.
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