Godshot

January 6, 2020
Religious fanaticism, environmental disaster, and gender inequality form the core of Bieker’s propulsive, ambitious debut centered on 14-year-old Lacey May and her drought-stricken hometown of Peaches, Calif. After Lacey’s mother abandons her, she’s left at the mercy of her widowed grandmother, Cherry, a devoted zealot under the spell of enigmatic cult leader Pastor Vern. Vern wears shiny capes, has convinced most of Peaches that he is God and can bring back the rain the area so desperately needs, and convinces a group of girls, among them Lacey, to become pregnant. When his plans for the babies become clear, Lacey’s life is thrown in a harrowing direction and leads her to discover her own resilience and salvation. Bieker straddles the line between darkly comic and downright dark, and excels in portraying female friendships—mother-daughter duo Daisy and Florin, who run a phone sex operation and step in to help Lacey, are particularly memorable—and the setting, a town full of abandoned shops and concrete canals and surrounded by dusty fields. Delving into patriarchal religious zealotry, Bieker’s excellent debut plants themes seen in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale into a realistic California setting that will linger with readers.

February 1, 2020
A young teen ensnared in a cult becomes obsessed with finding her exiled mother. Peaches is a small town near Fresno, in California's Central Valley. Once the raisin capital of the world, now Peaches is drought-ridden, with empty canals and residents in perpetual thirst. Large numbers of townspeople have turned to Pastor Vern, a Christ-like figure who promises that, if his congregants follow him and complete their "assignments," the rains will fall on Peaches again. (In the meantime, the churchgoers get baptized in cola.) Fourteen-year-old Lacey May, who lives with her alcoholic mother, doesn't know what her mother's assignment is; she only knows that she disappears somewhere unknown during the day and can't seem to stay out of trouble with Pastor Vern. When Lacey's mother is banished from the congregation and leaves town, Lacey must go live with her eccentric grandmother Cherry, an exuberant follower of the Gifts of the Spirit church. After Lacey is finally given a horrific assignment of her own, she is determined to find out where her mother has gone and what she knew about Pastor Vern's unsavory plans for the town of Peaches. Bieker has written a debut that joins Emma Cline's The Girls and R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries in exploring the uneasy intersection of repressive religious belief and burgeoning sexuality, but Bieker's exploration of the way that poverty and environmental ravishment also add to the subjugation of the female body adds more rich layers to this narrative. It's a lot to juggle, but Lacey May is such a strong narrator, at once deeply insightful and painfully naïve, that readers will eagerly want to follow all the threads to the breathless conclusion. A dark, deft first novel about the trauma and resilience of both people and the land they inhabit.

COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

February 21, 2020

DEBUT Abandoned by her mother to the care of her religious zealot grandmother, 14-year-old Lacey May is partly a God-stunned naive believer in cult leader Pastor Vern and partly a sharp skeptic. They live in Peaches, CA, a scorched town suffering from a drought so devastating that baptisms take place in an abandoned bathtub full of cola. Pastor Vern, who rules Peaches with an iron fist, is closely monitoring several young girls for signs of their "woman blood," which will signal their readiness for their "drought-ending assignment," mass impregnation. As the realization of the assignment's horrifying end goal picks up momentum, Lacey's frantic efforts to escape drive her to seek safety with an acid-scarred owner of a phone sex business and her daughter. VERDICT Lacey May's is an irresistible voice, part gullible believer, part whip-smart independent spirit who surprises at every turn. Debut novelist Bieker weaves in the political battles being fought on multiple fronts--climate change, controlling women by controlling their bodies, the intractability of cult-think, through the eyes of a wholly original, strong young woman who fiercely defends her soul against nearly overwhelming odds. [See Prepub Alert, 11/4/19.]--Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2020
Lacy May has never known a world outside the suffocating heat of California's Central Valley. Her town, Peaches, is experiencing a drought of divine proportions, and the residents have subsequently turned to religious cult leader Verne for guidance. Verne has assignments for every member of his flock. Lacy May's mother, an unmarried alcoholic, is assigned to save employees of the local phone-sex company. Lacy May doesn't receive any assignment at all?until her first period arrives. Verne's plan is to have all of Peaches' young menstruating girls impregnated, and with the collective birth of their babies, precipitation will arrive. Just as Verne's plan starts to hatch, Lacy May's mother disappears. Adding to this devastation, Lacy May is impregnated by her cousin and forced to live with her loopy, taxidermy-obsessed grandmother. She's determined to bring her mother back before her own baby arrives, a search that ultimately becomes a quest for liberation from the cult: two nearly impossible tasks in a place as isolated and dejected as Peaches. Bieker's debut novel is a vivid and cutting exploration of unconditional female love. It observes how mothers shape daughters, biological or otherwise, and how daughters must ultimately learn to mother themselves.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

Starred review from February 1, 2020
A young teen ensnared in a cult becomes obsessed with finding her exiled mother. Peaches is a small town near Fresno, in California's Central Valley. Once the raisin capital of the world, now Peaches is drought-ridden, with empty canals and residents in perpetual thirst. Large numbers of townspeople have turned to Pastor Vern, a Christ-like figure who promises that, if his congregants follow him and complete their "assignments," the rains will fall on Peaches again. (In the meantime, the churchgoers get baptized in cola.) Fourteen-year-old Lacey May, who lives with her alcoholic mother, doesn't know what her mother's assignment is; she only knows that she disappears somewhere unknown during the day and can't seem to stay out of trouble with Pastor Vern. When Lacey's mother is banished from the congregation and leaves town, Lacey must go live with her eccentric grandmother Cherry, an exuberant follower of the Gifts of the Spirit church. After Lacey is finally given a horrific assignment of her own, she is determined to find out where her mother has gone and what she knew about Pastor Vern's unsavory plans for the town of Peaches. Bieker has written a debut that joins Emma Cline's The Girls and R.O. Kwon's The Incendiaries in exploring the uneasy intersection of repressive religious belief and burgeoning sexuality, but Bieker's exploration of the way that poverty and environmental ravishment also add to the subjugation of the female body adds more rich layers to this narrative. It's a lot to juggle, but Lacey May is such a strong narrator, at once deeply insightful and painfully na�ve, that readers will eagerly want to follow all the threads to the breathless conclusion. A dark, deft first novel about the trauma and resilience of both people and the land they inhabit.

COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.