Sister Golden Calf

by Colleen Burner

Gloria and her sister Kit are in the trade of rehoming invisible ephemera they've captured in jars and now sell on the side of the road (can they interest you in SOMEONE ELSE'S DREAMS, NIGHT GREASE, or WHAT IS LEFT AFTER A STAR EXPLODES?). Motherless and rudderless, the sisters are on a road trip in their '93 Honda Accord across the sunburnt landscape of New Mexico. Restless with grief and doubt, Gloria becomes obsessed with a taxidermied eight-legged calf she meets in a roadside museum, and Kit takes a skeptical pilgrimage to a supposedly holy hole in the dirt floor of a church. The two cross paths with an array of characters, creatures, and places—The Calamity Janes, a roving motorcycle gang; an eyeless horse who reminds Gloria that she can see the unseen; and a ghost town where mysteries abound—in this sprawling and emotionally driven novella where the road is never-ending and sisterhood can be home.

Genres: Fiction, Novella

106 pages, Paperback

Published September 19, 2023

Reviews

[Janelle Stack · Rating 5 out of 5]

A profoundly written novel that artfully depicts the both grief and how it shapes both yourself and your relationships in its aftermath. If you’ve gone through anytime type of deep grief, I think you will find a kinship in this writing and a recognition of the untethered movements that carry your forward in its aftermath. The state of wandering and seeking that often accompanies a deep loss is something that I felt connected me to the main character, Gloria. Just like Gloria actions don’t always make sense, but neither does your inaction. So you pursue with what feels right in that moment.

I also really loved the relationship between Gloria and her sister, Kit. Wonderfully capturing the complexity of the sibling relationship. How your differences and history can be maddening and yet there is something that will always bind you together. Like a magnet with it’s opposite poles pulling back towards each other. Each sister found different and separate ways of working through their grief that felt true to each of them. Reminding me that you can have a shared loss but very different ways of working through it.

All this to say, it’s a worthwhile read that will make you think and consider relationships, all while being artfully lyrical with beautiful imagery.

[Mo Olson · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Made the Honda a constant motion, landscape smearing through the window at speeds that reminded us we weren't there, and also we weren't here-when you're constantly moving, you aren't really anywhere. You stop existing a little bit, in that way; suspension. By continuously being in mo-tion, we had put our lives on hold, or so we thought. Close as we could get, anyway.”

[Hallie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Colleen if you read this I loved this!! Thank you for writing it!!!

The language in this was absolutely beautiful. I loved Gloria and Kit and the journeys they took. Reading this felt like floating a bit in a summer daze, very atmospheric. I found myself really thinking about what we mean when we say we wish we could bottle a moment -- these girls are actually doing it.

[Alissa Hattman · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story of two sisters traveling through the desert with their jars full of "invisible things for feeling and knowing" shimmers like a dream. I was so moved by all the ways Gloria and Kit create a safe space for grief in their travels together. A space that is a car, a body, a sister willing to travel to the ends of the earth. A space that is perhaps, also, the space of the book itself. I love Gloria's way of tracking, her inventory of moments, and all that she's able to see. It seems like she is learning how to be in the world without her mother, and that this movement and tracking helps her feel into a new self. I was struck by how Gloria and Kit tend to one another and how their separation is also an important part of the journey. Then, later, in coming back together, how they each have a sharper understanding of how to be in the world -- what can and cannot be preserved, what they can let go of in order to rest and be still. The prose is stunning and unsettling in all the best ways. The description of the calf, for example, on page 41--that wonderfully long, gangly sentence strung together with semicolons--which also describes compassion, curiosity, and love. So strange, so fully gorgeous.

[Brita · Rating 5 out of 5]

A magical, desert fairy tale. I adored this.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a beautiful book. Strange and wild and evocative of so many of life’s unsaid things. Road trips and sunshine afternoons and grief and siblinghood and hope. This put me in a sizable mood.

[Mackinsey Wood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sister Golden Calf was a beautifully written story about 2 sisters looking to find a place for themselves after being left without structure after the tragic loss of a family member. Kit and Gloria are without direction (literally) as they traverse the desert in search of home and purpose. I loved the dynamic between the sisters. While their journeys were completely different, and the lessons learned were opposite from one another, they both got what they desperately needed from their quests. This was a bildungsroman in the purest sense: I laughed, cried, and rooted for both girls during the course of this novella. Easily one of the sweetest books I've read this year.

Thank you so much to Split Lip Press for sending me an eARC!

[Laura Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

I moved to New Mexico for a job a little over a year ago. As of late, I've been struggling with this place, the limits of my empathy, understanding, and patience tested, exploited and dismissed. One of the more material aspects of this struggle is the distance, the wide open road between places that everyone here loves and I, ironically, find restricting. After reading this book, I can see how that wideness is not too dissimilar to the ocean and seas I'm more familiar with; directions unable to be carved into roads.

[Bebe Glazer · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5) Love the idea of this book. Sisters running from grief, wild and gifted. I appreciated some of the free flowing thought but it got a little syrupy so it took me a while to get through the book. I really liked the parts of the actual journey. The ghost town, all the burritos.

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautiful little journey of sun-baked prose! It teeters a wonderful edge of realism and the fantastic. Took me a weirdly long time to finish, but I think that's more to blame on myself than the book. I loved so much of it. Would absolutely buy a jar of night grease.

[in8 · Rating 4 out of 5]

read road-tripping thru UT/AZ/New Mexico: https://5cense.com/24/1160.htm

[Kayla · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Two kinds of story: someone goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town. You’re either inside or you’re outside, subject or objectifying.”

[Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

In love with this book. The sisterhood, the portrayal of grief, the capturing of ephemera in jars.

[Split Lip Press · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can Gloria and Kit interest you in SOMEONE ELSE'S DREAMS, NIGHT GREASE, or WHAT IS LEFT AFTER A STAR EXPLODES?

Motherless and rudderless, the sisters are on a road trip in their '93 Honda Accord across the sunburnt landscape of New Mexico, working in the trade of rehoming invisible ephemera they've captured in jars and now sell on the side of the road. Restless with grief and doubt, Gloria becomes obsessed with a taxidermied eight-legged calf she meets in a roadside museum, and Kit takes a skeptical pilgrimage to a supposedly holy hole in the dirt floor of a church. The two cross paths with an array of characters, creatures, and places—The Calamity Janes, a roving motorcycle gang; an eyeless horse who reminds Gloria that she can see the unseen; and a ghost town where mysteries abound—in this sprawling and emotionally driven novella where the road is never-ending and sisterhood can be home.

Blurbed by Leni Zumas, Alexis Smith, Chelsea Bieker, Tara Ison, and David Naimon, who says, "How would a story move—at what speed, at what gait—and what shape would it take, what mood would it assume, if it followed, not Quixote or Kerouac, but two misfit sisters on the road?

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I read all year. I loved joining Gloria and Kit on their journey across New Mexico, grieving for the loss of their mother and trying to make a living by selling jars filled with what I think of as "fleeting moments." This is the perfect female-led road trip narrative you never knew you needed in your life! An entire desert highway is contained in this slim novel, along with all the quirky characters you could ever want to run into on said highway, human and more-than-human alike.