Glorybound

by Jessie van Eerden

In the drought-ridden mining town of Cuzzert, West Virginia—population 335—the only things that seem to change are the price of cigarettes and the roll call at the prison. Time has dried up like the rain, but two sisters, Aimee and Crystal Lemley, have set out to become prophets at Glorybound Holiness Tabernacle, the basement church where their father Cord Lemley was preacher. For ten years, the sisters have taken care of their mother, Dotte, while holding to vows they took as teenagers after their father skipped town: Crystal has kept silent, and Aimee has kept chaste. When the new teacher from Chicago, Aubrey Falls, attempts to reunite the Lemley family, he looses a flood of memory, misunderstanding, pain and grievance that threatens to swamp them all—unless Aimee and Crystal can see a path to grace.

Genres: Fiction

232 pages, Paperback

First published October 5, 2012

About the author

Jessie van Eerden is the author of two essay collections, Yoke & Feather and The Long Weeping, and three novels: Glorybound, My Radio Radio, and Call It Horses which won the 2019 Dzanc Books Prize for Fiction. Her work has appeared in Best American Spiritual Writing, Oxford American, AGNI, Image, New England Review, and other magazines and anthologies. She has been awarded the Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Award, the Michael Steinberg Memorial Essay Prize, the Gulf Coast Prize in Nonfiction, the Milton Fellowship, and a Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Fellowship. Jessie holds an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa and teaches at Hollins University.

Reviews

[Kirsten · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ah, my lyrical friend's first novel. It takes us inside the kind of community that often gets simplified and caricatured--a West Virginia mining town where the people don't have much money or formal education, and within that, a church called the Glorybound Holiness Tabernacle, where there is speaking in tongues and snake handling, and knowledge of scripture is part of daily life. It takes us inside, all the way to the center of the hearts of the people who live there. Having been raised, I regret to say, to dismiss and feel embarrassed by belief in the unseen, I enjoyed this alternative view I got of people who trust in it. And I loved the relationship at the center of the book between the two sisters, Aimee and Crystal Lemley--their deep knowledge of each other. There's an intimacy among the characters in the community in general that I think gets celebrated--a matter-of-fact intimacy that comes out of their living and suffering alongside each other and relying on each other. I found it beautiful.

And as with everything I've read of Jessie's, I so much enjoyed the gifts of her language. Here's a sentence I'm going to pluck out that I think encapsulates how right her word choices are and how her lyricism has a sort of stubborn unsentimentality to it that nonetheless breaks your heart:

Of the mother of the two sisters, who has shuffled around in her bathrobe for years since her husband left, Jessie writes:

"Since Dotte's hands had stalled out, the basic sewing tasks had fallen to Aimee."

Read this book for your introduction to Jessie's voice--there'll be more to come!

[Brianna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jessie van Eerden’s novel Glorybound is a beautiful novel. It tells the story of two sisters and their relationships with other people in the small town Cuzzert, West Virginia. The multiple voice construct of the novel makes it unique as well as very realistic. Jessie van Eerden allows us to accurately see details as spectators as well as through each of the characters’ eyes. Glorybound deals with faith from the very beginning as we find out that the Lemley sisters believe there is a calling on their life to be women prophets. The whole concept of faith colors the novel as it influences each character in different ways as the story progresses. Glorybound provides readers with a family of characters to share experiences with, ask questions with, grow with, and ultimately fall in love with.

[Debbi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Glorybound was slow to pull me in, but worth the patience. The characters are remarkable,as is the setting. It is a world of faith healing, snake handling,and community created by and bound by religion. I highly recommend it.

[Pavi J · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started to read this story slowly, trying to soak up the intensity--all the layered images, emotions. But my reading sped up as I got attached to the characters and enveloped in the plot. I felt an urgency to know the ending! And when the ending came I was sad it was over! Though I thought the ending was rich, I wanted more of Aimee, Aubrey, Ronnie, Crys, Cord and Dotte...it is hard to say goodbye to characters that you love.

That being said, I know I'll need to go back and read it again, and maybe another time after! To experience again and think about what the author does with time, and motifs of flesh, sound, and silence, the senses.

"She felt her body separating from her voice, like a cat curling away from its own cry, a beautiful cry that had always sung the sweet words of hymns with force and yearning, as though she were rescuing the words from among the snares of the old shape notes on the page" (59).

"Aimee often walked the road, humming to herself and kicking rocks, thinking of the people driving by and how she looked to them as they passed. They might say, "There she is, the one who walks the road" (65).

[Jillian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read it if … you have a free moment, because the novel just flies, or if you’re interested in new, rising authors. I hope Jessie van Eerden continues writing, because she has a lasting voice, one that’s attuned to addressing those lovely moments of simultaneous heartbreak and beauty.

Don’t read it if … you take issue with spirituality or religion. While Glorybound may not be a strict come-to-Jesus novel, its characters and its story revolve heavily around the central figure of an imposing God.

This book is like … The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls gives us another view of a young woman growing up in rural America and navigating the eccentricities of the adults who raised her. Christy by Catherine Marshall tells the tale of a young, bushy tailed city girl decides to hike into the Appalachians to teach school children in Cutter Gap. She has to battle her own prejudices and those of the Cutter Gap citizens, and she has to decide between the affections of an atheist doctor and the new, dashing preacher.

Check out the rest of my review on my blog: http://litbeetle.com/2014/07/01/on-je...

[Abby Bryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved reading Glorybound. This novel is a perfect blend of the beautiful imagery of poetry with deep and meaningful characterization. I found the character depth and development to be the cornerstone of this book. While the setting is unique, a rural West Virginian town with a collection of quirky Evangelical residents, Glorybound's value lies in van Eerden's ability to write poignantly and meaningfully about the common and often overlooked. Lines like "Crystal gathered in the voices and memories, gathered them like the rain gauge she saw now on the fencepost, measuring rainfall" (pg. 105) will connect you with the characters as well as to the importance of recognizing meaning in the ordinary. You will find yourself caught up in the beauty of her descriptions, in the connection you feel to her very human and very complicated characters, and in the constantly shifting perspectives and flashbacks that end up giving you as the reader a holistic sense of the characters' lives and the interesting story being told. This is a must read!

[Charlie Byers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full disclosure: the author is a friend of my wife's, so if I'd hated the book, I probably wouldn't have said anything here at all. But I caught a reading at a university, and was wowed by the handful of pages I heard, so I picked it up, and read the book from cover to cover in the space of a couple of days. Glorybound combines two things I don't often find together: meticulously polished language, and an elegant sense for the pace and tension of the overall story. Nobody likes pat comparisons, but I described it to a friend as "like Eudora Welty, only faster", and I'd stand by that. There's a taste of a 'southern gothic' aesthetic here, though it doesn't keep the book from feeling modern and forward-looking. I also liked that it gave a sincere voice to a slice of American culture that's poorly represented in our literature. There's just a ton of craft on display, in this novel, and I eagerly recommend it.

[Shari McCullough · Rating 4 out of 5]

A cast of fractured characters are presented by Van Eerden in all their earthy, raw, flawed and yet redeemable manners in the context of their life in a small, failing town. I love, love, LOVE Van Eerden's gift of assisting the reader to see, touch, smell, get inside the characters and place.

"She did not shake it loose with any utterance, like a hand on an apron shaking loose a house spider."

"The soul was a tender bird hatched without warning, and there was no going back into the shell. The exposure, the defending—and he thought of Aimee’s bold, desperate gestures, like wings flapping—became a way of life. Aubrey wondered if his soul had ever hatched, or if he’d paid attention when it had."

In addition to Van Eerden's gift with words she extends the reader an opportunity to experience grace and redemption.

I can't wait to read more of her work!

[Hannah Notess · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jessie Van Eerden's writing style is unique, really, unlike anybody else I've read or edited. It's hard for me to say exactly what makes it so distinctive, but it's definitely Jessie writing and nobody else.

I think it has something to do with the thick layers of metaphor woven into the narration and the onslaught of sensory detail that makes you slow down and read. So it's more like reading poetry than reading prose, but the story is still there and really quite moving. This book made me slow down and pay attention in a good way. I ached for the characters, their hearts and hurts. This novel is totally beautiful.

[Paige Goodman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Glorybound does a wonderful job of explaining to readers all across the country what the world of Appalachia is like. The Lemley sisters are living in a soon-to-be-dead town in West Virginia, and they are living in a place that feels the same emotionally. Van Eerden's writing style is surprisingly detailed in places the reader would never expect. Her writing shows that repetitive details can add strength to writing. I found myself searching for button references in this book, due to the number of times she focuses on the simple quality of the buttons in scenes over and over. The book was good.

[Richard Brand · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are a number of dimensions to this work. I particularly like the way she makes the pentecostal believers real. They have been deceived by the prediction of the second coming of Jesus, and they are living with the flight of the preacher who made that prediction, their father. Two girls who take vows and who in the end find a way to fulfill the vows and move on. There is a focus as well and the life of quiet desperation of the middle class vista volunteer. One has to feel that there is something at work in all of this that is more than just the human spirit.

[Jonathan Hiskes · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tender, bracing look at a family of charismatics in backwoods West Virginia. The story creates a lucid world and then invites you inside, led by four distinct and equally complex lead characters. Utterly beautiful ending scene too. What I liked best is the way Van Eerden engages holy-roller religion -- she's critical, astute and yet compassionate, treating tongue-speakers and snake-handlers as human beings, capable of both foolishness and wisdom, like the rest of us.

[J.W. Zulauf · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read with great characters. I loved every word of this. I loved following these very different characters on their journey. I found myself thinking about them while working and doing other tasks. Very memorable. I was personally attached to Aubrey Falls and I kind of fell in love with Aimee. I have added this to that little spot I have reserved for recommended books. I hope more people read this. They should. It's fantastic.

[Jenny Reimer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not only was this book incredibly interesting and the characters were endearing and well-imagined, but even more than any of its parts, Jessie van Eerden writes with incredible depth and visionary brilliance. The world that she creates is at once a true likeness of a part of American religiosity that isn't so widely experienced, it's a cautionary tale, a fable...an homage and a critique exacted with utterly unique tenderness. She's a new favorite of mine and will be an enduring one.

[Alexis O · Rating 4 out of 5]

For some reason, I had a really hard time getting into this book. It had a slow start for a me. I think, at its heart, it was a lovely story. The main characters were just raw nerves and it became very clear why as the story unfolded. It is ultimately about forgiveness, acceptance, and growing into oneself.

[Karin · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a little hard to get into this book due to the many different perspectives and flashbacks as well as the fact that the characters seem pretty strange. However, it was totally worth getting through the first third. The ending is amazing!

[Daniel Jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magnificent.

I hope that GLORYBOUND continues to find readers for a very long time; it's one of the best American novels I've read in the past few years. It's clear that Jessie van Eerden is a truly exciting writer to watch.

[Bonita · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a long time to get into this book. I wasn't invested in the characters until about halfway through, then I wanted to know what happened to them. I was surprised to find a liked the book in the end.

[Gerry LaFemina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although a bit slow at times, Glorybound is the work of a strong craftsperson who is able to juggle multiple characters, their personal agendas, and their damaged relationships in prose that is graceful. A solid read.

[Charity · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing book! I couldn't put it down.

[Alissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful! I was drawn in by each character. I want to read it again from the start now that I feel like I've come to know each of them.