Synopses & Reviews
M A T H I A S T R U E I S R E V E R E N D A M E R I C A
CALLING YOU BACK TO THE HOLY MUSIC OF LIFE
It Is True! LOVE IS YOUR ONLY REDEEMER!
Rocky is the road. Weary is the way. Lay your burden down
Come Be Healed By This Glorious WHITE KNIGHT!
Mathias is better known as Casper, an albino preacher who had healing ways in his youth. Back in his hometown of Joplin, Missouri seeking rest from years of hurt, Casper soon finds himself with the pregnant teenage prostitute Angelike outrunning their pasts on the great road south. Dangers follow them, characters as crazed and colorful as America’s own history greet them, and Casper finds himself on the unexpected road to salvation.
Singing in a space between Flannery O’Connor and Carl Hiaasen, Reverend America mixes the old with the new. A kicking and spitting true-to-life tale that is Saknussemm’s most heart-rending to date.
Review
"Weird as a carnival midway and real and tragic as blues harmonica. Reverend America is blisteringly good. Kris Saknussemm is red-hot and smoking." Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander
Review
"There was a time when fictional men and women grew all their hair as long as they could and wondered about what America meant and whether the American Experiment was ever or could ever be a success. Reverend America wanders through a United States that barely exists anymore in modern fiction...a thesis statement on old-fashioned salvation." Paul Constant, The Stranger
Review
"Saknussemm is a rare visionary of American culture, a fearless artist with his very own skew on the western world. Reverend America is brilliant!" Jonathan Evison, New York Times best-selling author of West of Here
Synopsis
An aging albino nicknamed Casper travels home to Joplin, Missouri seeking refuge, only to find himself rescuing a pregnant teenage prostitute and embarking on a journey to the deep South. From the tornado ravaged landscape of Oklahoma where they meet an escaped old folksinger in the ruins of a demolished nursing home to the eccentric streets of Austin, Texas, their fugitive search for salvation ends finally in the bayous of Louisiana. Throughout the journey, memories of violence and sadness haunt Casper as a cast of characters as colorful and peculiar as America’s own history lead them to find something beyond all their individual expectations. In the tradition of Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood and Carl Hiaasen’s Lucky You, this dark comedy mixes the old with the new, inviting us into a fresh and uniquely meaningful story.
Video
About the Author
Kris Saknussemm is the award-winning author of three internationally acclaimed novels, a short story collection, and a collection of his visual art. Kirkus called Saknussemm “exuberantly weird.” Kris is the son of a Congregational minister and the great-grandson of one of America’s most famous evangelists. He is currently at the Black Mountain Insititute of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas for the Gallagher Fellowship.