The Angels Came to Sodom in the Evening - Paul Russell

"Fearless. In prose that is lush and unflinching, it explores the entanglement of desire and shame, power and cruelty, biblical landscapes and the American South." -�Chloe BenjaminA masterful return from one of thegreats of contemporary American fiction. In 1970s Memphis, two boys lock in battle. They're best friends, but when your body floods with longing, sometimes all youcan do is fight. Then one summer, at a Christian camp, Rory Singleton meets afellow teenager who shows him the wonders of dragonflies and sex- episodes ofstolen pleasure that awaken a hunger he'll spend a lifetime trying to bury. As an adult, Rory is the pastor of athriving megachurch, his life built on secrets, careful silences, and furtiveencounters. But when he's sent to Africa to promote a homophobic crusade, thecontradictions become unbearable. A reckoning begins-one that will take himfrom the pulpit to underground queer spaces, from respectability to radicalhonesty, from denial to a raw, dangerous freedom, and finally to aconfrontation with everything he's built and everyone he's betrayed. From the author of the award-winning�TheComing Storm�comes a searing novel in the tradition of James Baldwinand Flannery O'Connor-a devastating portrait of American evangelicalism's waron desire, and one man's fight to reclaim the pleasure and truth he's beendenied.