A Handbook of American Prayer: A Novel
Starred Review. Having made his reputation with literary SF and fantasy set in the jungles of Central America (The Jaguar Hunter), Shepard embarked on a second phase in his career, exploring the back roads of America (Two Trains Running). Mixing the tropes of fantasy and noir fiction, Shepard has cobbled together a beguiling tale. Wardlin Stuart, spinning his wheels as a bartender just off of Puget Sound, gets into a drunken brawl that ends in death for his attacker. Convicted of manslaughter and imprisoned, he concocts something called "prayerstyle" as a way to survive institutional violence. To Wardin's surprise, prayerstyle works; it even brings him the love of his life. Word gets out, and other inmates ask him to create and chant prayers for them. Wardlin puts together a book of prayers, andA Handbook of American Prayeris published, resulting in parole, unwanted fame and hundreds of pleas from across the country for help. Wondering if the religion he inadvertently created is a blessing or a curse, Wardlin tries to lay low with his lady love in Arizona. But his growing popularity results in a violent encounter with a fundamentalist Christian preacher from Phoenix. And just as he's planning to give up prayerstyle, Wardlin discovers that his fictitious god may be real. This well-paced meditation on the nature of faith and our national obsession with the cult of celebrity finds Shepard at the height of his powers: poetic and pugnacious; metaphysical, yet down and dirty as a back-alley brawl.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.