Agatha of Little Neon

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Agatha of Little Neon follows the rarest of groups — four 21st-century nuns “called” to run a halfway house in a rundown RI town. Gently funny and subversive, Luchette populates her sparkling debut with memorable characters who help Agatha accept the ways both she and the Church she’s pinned her life to are changing. Recommended By Rhianna W., Powells.com

Blazingly original, wry, and perfectly attuned to the oddness — and the profundity — of life" (Cristina Henríquez), Claire Luchette's debut, Agatha of Little Neon, is a novel about yearning and sisterhood, figuring out how you fit in (or don't), and the unexpected friends who help you find your truest self

Agatha has lived every day of the last seven years with her sisters: they work together, laugh together, pray together. Their world is contained within the little house they share. The four of them are devoted to Mother Roberta and to their quiet, purposeful life.

But when the parish goes broke, the sisters are forced to move. They land in Woonsocket, a former mill town now dotted with wind turbines. They head up a halfway house, where they live alongside castoffs like the jawless Tim Gary and the headstrong Lawnmower Jill. Agatha is forced to venture out into the world alone, to teach math at a local all-girls high school, where for the first time in years she will have to reckon with what she sees and feels all on her own. Who will she be if she isn't with her sisters? These women, the church, have been her home — or has she just been hiding?

Disarming, delightfully deadpan, and full of searching, Claire Luchette's Agatha of Little Neon offers a view into the lives of women and the choices they make. It is a novel about female friendship and devotion, the roles made available to us, and how we become ourselves.

"Sublime....A literary version of Sister Act by way of Wes Anderson." O Magazine

“Vibrant....A charming and incisive debut.” Kirkus Reviews

"[A] dynamic and resonant debut....Employing...shimmering prose, Luchette [creates] a lovely story of how cross-cultural exchange can foster hope and fruitful advancements. This is charming and remarkably thoughtful." Publishers Weekly

"There's not a false step in this novel of sisterhood, belonging, and what it means to choose a life for yourself. Agatha of Little Neon is a brilliant testament to Claire Luchette's skill and original voice." Lisa Ko, author of The Leavers

"Claire Luchette is a dazzlingly gifted new voice, a master at balancing a sneaky deadpan wit with deep and genuine pathos. Agatha of Little Neon brilliantly mixes the sacred and the transgressive, the solemn and the absurd, and the profound, contradictory longings for belonging and independence. This book is a moving meditation on how to be a woman in the world — and how to be a human." Karen Thompson Walker, author of The Dreamers

Claire Luchette has published work in the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and Granta. A 2020 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Luchette graduated from the University of Oregon MFA program and has received grants and scholarships from MacDowell, Yaddo, the Millay Colony for the Arts, Lighthouse Works, the Elizabeth George Foundation, and the James Merrill House. Agatha of Little Neon is Luchette's first novel.