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High as the Horses' Bridles
A Washington Post Top 50 of 2014 Fiction pick
A Wall Street Journal Book of the Year, selected by Phil Klay
Electric Literature 2014: Year of the Debut
A Largehearted Boy Favorite Novel of 2014
Slaughterhouse 90210's Most Rapturous Book of 2014
Vol. 1 Brooklyn A Year of Favorites: Jason Diamond picks
Called "powerful and unflinching" by Column McCann in The New York Times Book Review, "something of a miracle" by Ron Charles in the Washington Post, and named a must read by The Millions, Time Out, New York Magazine, and Grantland; Scott Cheshire's debut is a "great new American epic" (Philipp Meyer) about a father and son finding their way back to each other.
"Deeply Imagined"—The New York Times / "Daring and Brilliant"—Ron Charles, Washington Post / "Vivid"—Elle / "One of the finest novels you will read this year."—Flavorwire
It's 1980 at a crowded amphitheater in Queens, New York and a nervous Josiah Laudermilk, age 12, is about to step to the stage while thousands of believers wait to hear him, the boy preaching prodigy, pour forth. Suddenly, as if a switch had been flipped, Josiah's nerves shake away and his words come rushing out, his whole body fills to the brim with the certainty of a strange apocalyptic vision. But is it true prophecy or just a young believer's imagination running wild? Decades later when Josiah (now Josie) is grown and has long since left the church, he returns to Queens to care for his father who, day by day, is losing his grip on reality. Barreling through the old neighborhood, memories of the past--of his childhood friend Issy, of his first love, of the mother he has yet to properly mourn--overwhelm him at every turn. When he arrives at his family's old house, he's completely unprepared for what he finds. How far back must one man journey to heal a broken bond between father and son?
In rhapsodic language steeped in the oral tradition of American evangelism, Scott Cheshire brings us under his spell. Remarkable in scale--moving from 1980 Queens, to sunny present-day California, to a tent revival in nineteenth century rural Kentucky--and shot-through with the power and danger of belief and the love that binds generations, High as the Horses' Bridles is a bold, heartbreaking debut from a big new American voice.
A Wall Street Journal Book of the Year, selected by Phil Klay
Electric Literature 2014: Year of the Debut
A Largehearted Boy Favorite Novel of 2014
Slaughterhouse 90210's Most Rapturous Book of 2014
Vol. 1 Brooklyn A Year of Favorites: Jason Diamond picks
Called "powerful and unflinching" by Column McCann in The New York Times Book Review, "something of a miracle" by Ron Charles in the Washington Post, and named a must read by The Millions, Time Out, New York Magazine, and Grantland; Scott Cheshire's debut is a "great new American epic" (Philipp Meyer) about a father and son finding their way back to each other.
"Deeply Imagined"—The New York Times / "Daring and Brilliant"—Ron Charles, Washington Post / "Vivid"—Elle / "One of the finest novels you will read this year."—Flavorwire
It's 1980 at a crowded amphitheater in Queens, New York and a nervous Josiah Laudermilk, age 12, is about to step to the stage while thousands of believers wait to hear him, the boy preaching prodigy, pour forth. Suddenly, as if a switch had been flipped, Josiah's nerves shake away and his words come rushing out, his whole body fills to the brim with the certainty of a strange apocalyptic vision. But is it true prophecy or just a young believer's imagination running wild? Decades later when Josiah (now Josie) is grown and has long since left the church, he returns to Queens to care for his father who, day by day, is losing his grip on reality. Barreling through the old neighborhood, memories of the past--of his childhood friend Issy, of his first love, of the mother he has yet to properly mourn--overwhelm him at every turn. When he arrives at his family's old house, he's completely unprepared for what he finds. How far back must one man journey to heal a broken bond between father and son?
In rhapsodic language steeped in the oral tradition of American evangelism, Scott Cheshire brings us under his spell. Remarkable in scale--moving from 1980 Queens, to sunny present-day California, to a tent revival in nineteenth century rural Kentucky--and shot-through with the power and danger of belief and the love that binds generations, High as the Horses' Bridles is a bold, heartbreaking debut from a big new American voice.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published July 8, 2014
8 people are currently reading
1100 people want to read
About the author
Scott Cheshire
8 books54 followersScott Cheshire is the author of High as the Horses' Bridles (Henry Holt). His work has been published in AGNI, Electric Literature, Guernica, Harper’s, One Story, Slice, and the Picador Book of Men. He lives in New York City.
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July 16, 2014
If you were raised, as I was, in a small church with intense ideals at odds with mainstream culture, you can remember that awkward pressure to stand apart from the world and, as the Bible commands, be “separate.” There’s a price to be paid for that separateness, especially during those adolescent years of desperate belonging, but there are compensatory rewards, too. Some smug atheist might imagine that the devout live in a state of bovine credence, but for me — and for many people I know — faith has been a fierce struggle with the most profound questions of human life.
Considering the persistent varieties of religious experience in America, we aren’t blessed with nearly enough good novels about the diverse currents of spirituality. And the shelves are particularly quiet — or unhelpfully shrill — on the more radical expressions of religious belief. Which makes Scott Cheshire’s first novel, “High as the Horses’ Bridles,” all the more enticing.
Cheshire was raised in the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a church that evolved from the Bible Student movement that began in the late 19th century. In the crude shorthand of religious Post-It Notes: They’re the ones who refuse blood transfusions. But more important to this novel, they’re also the ones who believe in the imminent arrival of Armageddon and the violent destruction of this fallen world. The title “High as the Horses’ Bridles” comes from the Book of Revelation in a verse that describes just how deep the sinners’ blood will flow in the streets.
That apocalyptic image hangs over each of the three surprisingly disparate parts of this novel. The opening section is a 30-page episode set in a new church in Queens in 1980. Cheshire moves through the congregation, capturing the swirling emotions of excitement and boredom, suspense and joy, all gathering to focus on a nervous, 12-year-old boy named Josiah Laudermilk. He’s about to stand before 4,000 parishioners who are “awaiting a description of this world. And the next.” Able to recall and recite long passages of the Bible, Josiah is a weird kid, powerless at school but strong in this house of God. His father stares up at him in rapture, wondering, “Who could’ve hoped for a son like this?” And in the brilliant light of all those expectant eyes, Josiah suddenly sloughs off his nervousness, drops his notes and yells: “Look! For the Lord and His army come knocking!”
It’s a perfectly calibrated scene, spun from bits of family backstory, meandering asides and moments of quiet comedy that are suddenly swept up in a final conflagration of youthful vanity and spiritual passion on the pulpit. Cheshire himself was once a child preacher, and he’s clearly reaching back to that unique sense of exaltation that sometimes ignites a witness of God’s glory.
But this is largely a story that takes place in the ashes of that passion. The bulk of the novel, told in the first person, opens 25 years later when Josiah leaves his miserable life in California to return home — reluctantly, tardily — to care for his ailing father. While Josie abandoned his faith (and his full, formal name) years ago, his father has continued to grow more self-destructively devout. Emaciated, wearing only a loincloth, sleeping in the bathroom, the old man is now trapped in the circular, self-confirming logic of a religious fanatic. The proud delusion that God punishes and rewards according to the quality of his prayers has curdled into a bitter cup of guilt.
This is a complicated and tender exploration of the tragedy of spiritual mania, of living in the endlessly recycled disappointment that “the harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” But more universally, it’s also a novel about the relationship between a father and son and their sympathy that passeth all understanding. Though he hasn’t prayed or attended church for decades, Josie understands the stickiness of deep devotion. “I’m not so sure faith is a thing that can ever be lost,” he says. “Like every love we have, there’s always remnants deep inside us, in our cells.” Stained by a full spectrum of regrets, Josie has neither the anger nor the superiority of a true apostate, and he knows his own wasted life is no convincing testimony to the advantages of godlessness.
Unlike the tightly focused opening section, the bulk of the novel is discursive and nostalgic — sometimes excessively so. Josie gently tries to prod his father toward medical attention and to get the cluttered, cat-filled house in order. “How did I get here?” he wonders. “What exactly was the trajectory that followed from my brief career as a prophet?” Set in the weirdly timeless atmosphere of a sickroom, it’s a difficult plot to carry off — some light nursing care, some small talk, a few intense confrontations — but it’s marked by a number of affecting moments as Josie scrutinizes his father’s possessions, pawing through memories of his Jesus-freak adolescence, trying to understand how faith and shame and pride had bent his family into its peculiar shape.
These circumstances are strange and extreme, to be sure, but Josie’s pained confession is nondenominational. “I ran from Dad,” he says. “I ran from his insistence I was special, from his compulsive and overwhelming need to believe, from his very blood, which of course I couldn’t get away from, no matter where I went.” What could be more intoxicating, what could deliver a higher high or a scarier fall than the person you love most passionately declaring that “this special boy would be nothing less than kingly”? Even if angels attend your birth in a manger, that’s a cross to bear.
The final section of “High As the Horses’ Bridles” makes another surprising jump in both form and time. In fact, the distinct opening and closing sections are so good as to suggest that Cheshire may be a better short story writer than he is a novelist. On the other hand, there’s something daring and brilliant about this disorienting postlude set in Kentucky in 1801. Far from the story of Josie and his father, it casts that main story in a new and haunting light. Here, Cheshire captures the anguish that has always driven people of faith — or no faith — toward the unbridled promise of a time when “there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away.”
No matter what you believe, fiction writing that delivers us to a moment like that is something of a miracle.
This review was published in The Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...
Considering the persistent varieties of religious experience in America, we aren’t blessed with nearly enough good novels about the diverse currents of spirituality. And the shelves are particularly quiet — or unhelpfully shrill — on the more radical expressions of religious belief. Which makes Scott Cheshire’s first novel, “High as the Horses’ Bridles,” all the more enticing.
Cheshire was raised in the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a church that evolved from the Bible Student movement that began in the late 19th century. In the crude shorthand of religious Post-It Notes: They’re the ones who refuse blood transfusions. But more important to this novel, they’re also the ones who believe in the imminent arrival of Armageddon and the violent destruction of this fallen world. The title “High as the Horses’ Bridles” comes from the Book of Revelation in a verse that describes just how deep the sinners’ blood will flow in the streets.
That apocalyptic image hangs over each of the three surprisingly disparate parts of this novel. The opening section is a 30-page episode set in a new church in Queens in 1980. Cheshire moves through the congregation, capturing the swirling emotions of excitement and boredom, suspense and joy, all gathering to focus on a nervous, 12-year-old boy named Josiah Laudermilk. He’s about to stand before 4,000 parishioners who are “awaiting a description of this world. And the next.” Able to recall and recite long passages of the Bible, Josiah is a weird kid, powerless at school but strong in this house of God. His father stares up at him in rapture, wondering, “Who could’ve hoped for a son like this?” And in the brilliant light of all those expectant eyes, Josiah suddenly sloughs off his nervousness, drops his notes and yells: “Look! For the Lord and His army come knocking!”
It’s a perfectly calibrated scene, spun from bits of family backstory, meandering asides and moments of quiet comedy that are suddenly swept up in a final conflagration of youthful vanity and spiritual passion on the pulpit. Cheshire himself was once a child preacher, and he’s clearly reaching back to that unique sense of exaltation that sometimes ignites a witness of God’s glory.
But this is largely a story that takes place in the ashes of that passion. The bulk of the novel, told in the first person, opens 25 years later when Josiah leaves his miserable life in California to return home — reluctantly, tardily — to care for his ailing father. While Josie abandoned his faith (and his full, formal name) years ago, his father has continued to grow more self-destructively devout. Emaciated, wearing only a loincloth, sleeping in the bathroom, the old man is now trapped in the circular, self-confirming logic of a religious fanatic. The proud delusion that God punishes and rewards according to the quality of his prayers has curdled into a bitter cup of guilt.
This is a complicated and tender exploration of the tragedy of spiritual mania, of living in the endlessly recycled disappointment that “the harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.” But more universally, it’s also a novel about the relationship between a father and son and their sympathy that passeth all understanding. Though he hasn’t prayed or attended church for decades, Josie understands the stickiness of deep devotion. “I’m not so sure faith is a thing that can ever be lost,” he says. “Like every love we have, there’s always remnants deep inside us, in our cells.” Stained by a full spectrum of regrets, Josie has neither the anger nor the superiority of a true apostate, and he knows his own wasted life is no convincing testimony to the advantages of godlessness.
Unlike the tightly focused opening section, the bulk of the novel is discursive and nostalgic — sometimes excessively so. Josie gently tries to prod his father toward medical attention and to get the cluttered, cat-filled house in order. “How did I get here?” he wonders. “What exactly was the trajectory that followed from my brief career as a prophet?” Set in the weirdly timeless atmosphere of a sickroom, it’s a difficult plot to carry off — some light nursing care, some small talk, a few intense confrontations — but it’s marked by a number of affecting moments as Josie scrutinizes his father’s possessions, pawing through memories of his Jesus-freak adolescence, trying to understand how faith and shame and pride had bent his family into its peculiar shape.
These circumstances are strange and extreme, to be sure, but Josie’s pained confession is nondenominational. “I ran from Dad,” he says. “I ran from his insistence I was special, from his compulsive and overwhelming need to believe, from his very blood, which of course I couldn’t get away from, no matter where I went.” What could be more intoxicating, what could deliver a higher high or a scarier fall than the person you love most passionately declaring that “this special boy would be nothing less than kingly”? Even if angels attend your birth in a manger, that’s a cross to bear.
The final section of “High As the Horses’ Bridles” makes another surprising jump in both form and time. In fact, the distinct opening and closing sections are so good as to suggest that Cheshire may be a better short story writer than he is a novelist. On the other hand, there’s something daring and brilliant about this disorienting postlude set in Kentucky in 1801. Far from the story of Josie and his father, it casts that main story in a new and haunting light. Here, Cheshire captures the anguish that has always driven people of faith — or no faith — toward the unbridled promise of a time when “there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away.”
No matter what you believe, fiction writing that delivers us to a moment like that is something of a miracle.
This review was published in The Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/enterta...
August 28, 2016
I plan to re-read Scott Cheshire's debut novel, "High As the Horses' Bridles," and re-review it too. But I was so moved by it and so engrossed in it, I decided to write something now.
Full disclosure: Scott Cheshire's agent, Carrie Howland, of Donadio & Olsen, is a friend of mine, and she's been a guest at the Crossroads Writers Conference, which I co-founded in Macon, Georgia.
She sent me the book. But when she first asked if I'd be interested, I held my breath. I was scared to death it was going to suck. Carrie is, as we say, "good people" and I didn't want to decline any more than I wanted to be mean.
Before I could come up with a way out of it, she told me why I'd want to read it. The book is about a guy, Josie Laudermilk, who had been a child preacher (and made a ultimately failed prophesy about the end of the world), trying to connect as an adult with his father who was dying.
That caught me a certain way.
I think regularly about, maybe, ten topics. Two of those are the conservative, evangelical American Christianity of my youth and fatherhood, particularly regarding my Dad, who passed away nearly three years ago.
My first sermon was delivered at age 12. I've since fallen away from that faith tradition, and largely from attempts to organize faith.
Which is why I want to read it again. I'd like to avoid writing a "Hey, if you were indoctrinated at an early age to evangelize the hope for palatial afterlife digs and later rebelled, you'll love..." review.
Because there's so much more here.
Reading the book often felt personal and intimate. And some of that feeling was due to my personal history but much of it came out of Scott Cheshire's talent and the soul that imbues his work.
The further I read, the longer the list grew of people I wanted to gift with a copy. Initially, that list was almost entirely other evangelical expatriates and other guys who'd lost or are losing their dads, but then it was just "people who like to read well-written books."
Though the father-son story is the heart of Cheshire's book, the heartbreak is Josie's failed marriage, his failing business, the sense he has gotten damn close to failing life. He's already lost his mother to cancer and his wife to neglect and between those, he's lost whatever compass he once had.
It hurts to get to know the adult, Josie, when we do. He'd done so well just a few years before. That story would have been one of triumph and overcoming. He'd come so far from the struggles thrown at the child, Josiah, who experienced serious losses that heightened the isolation that enveloped his home. In this story, you can only hope here he gets his shit straight soon.
What struck me most is how, despite the very narrow experience of his hero's upbringing, Cheshire makes Josie's inability to sail through adulthood feel like normal human fucked-up-ness.
Clearly Josiah/Josie was stamped hard by the subculture that outlined his childhood, the tragedies that surrounded him and the variant strain of faith that infected his father. But Cheshire made this seeming singularity feel as universal as it is unique.
The deeper I got into Josie's life, the less it resembled my own on paper. But the more my own mistakes--like everyone's--felt like lessons learned the hard way.
That is, you may not have offered thousands of eager zealots a specific date for Armageddon when you were a kid, but you screwed-up plenty and it's taken you all this time since to start getting it right.
Before I end this, I want to mention the beginning and the end.
The opening is stunning and seductive. If you can't get into this book after that, screw you. (I mean, eh, too bad.)
The closing chapter is haunting and eloquent, and damn near deserving its own book. But it's good that you get it where you get it and with the story it follows. Plenty of folks won't get it. That's fine.
Read "High As the Horses' Bridles" if you want to feel something.
Full disclosure: Scott Cheshire's agent, Carrie Howland, of Donadio & Olsen, is a friend of mine, and she's been a guest at the Crossroads Writers Conference, which I co-founded in Macon, Georgia.
She sent me the book. But when she first asked if I'd be interested, I held my breath. I was scared to death it was going to suck. Carrie is, as we say, "good people" and I didn't want to decline any more than I wanted to be mean.
Before I could come up with a way out of it, she told me why I'd want to read it. The book is about a guy, Josie Laudermilk, who had been a child preacher (and made a ultimately failed prophesy about the end of the world), trying to connect as an adult with his father who was dying.
That caught me a certain way.
I think regularly about, maybe, ten topics. Two of those are the conservative, evangelical American Christianity of my youth and fatherhood, particularly regarding my Dad, who passed away nearly three years ago.
My first sermon was delivered at age 12. I've since fallen away from that faith tradition, and largely from attempts to organize faith.
Which is why I want to read it again. I'd like to avoid writing a "Hey, if you were indoctrinated at an early age to evangelize the hope for palatial afterlife digs and later rebelled, you'll love..." review.
Because there's so much more here.
Reading the book often felt personal and intimate. And some of that feeling was due to my personal history but much of it came out of Scott Cheshire's talent and the soul that imbues his work.
The further I read, the longer the list grew of people I wanted to gift with a copy. Initially, that list was almost entirely other evangelical expatriates and other guys who'd lost or are losing their dads, but then it was just "people who like to read well-written books."
Though the father-son story is the heart of Cheshire's book, the heartbreak is Josie's failed marriage, his failing business, the sense he has gotten damn close to failing life. He's already lost his mother to cancer and his wife to neglect and between those, he's lost whatever compass he once had.
It hurts to get to know the adult, Josie, when we do. He'd done so well just a few years before. That story would have been one of triumph and overcoming. He'd come so far from the struggles thrown at the child, Josiah, who experienced serious losses that heightened the isolation that enveloped his home. In this story, you can only hope here he gets his shit straight soon.
What struck me most is how, despite the very narrow experience of his hero's upbringing, Cheshire makes Josie's inability to sail through adulthood feel like normal human fucked-up-ness.
Clearly Josiah/Josie was stamped hard by the subculture that outlined his childhood, the tragedies that surrounded him and the variant strain of faith that infected his father. But Cheshire made this seeming singularity feel as universal as it is unique.
The deeper I got into Josie's life, the less it resembled my own on paper. But the more my own mistakes--like everyone's--felt like lessons learned the hard way.
That is, you may not have offered thousands of eager zealots a specific date for Armageddon when you were a kid, but you screwed-up plenty and it's taken you all this time since to start getting it right.
Before I end this, I want to mention the beginning and the end.
The opening is stunning and seductive. If you can't get into this book after that, screw you. (I mean, eh, too bad.)
The closing chapter is haunting and eloquent, and damn near deserving its own book. But it's good that you get it where you get it and with the story it follows. Plenty of folks won't get it. That's fine.
Read "High As the Horses' Bridles" if you want to feel something.
July 3, 2015
I had high hopes for this debut novel, having read good reviews of it on its release last year, but ultimately I was left disappointed.
The book is mainly written from the point of view of recently divorced Josiah Laudermilk, a 37 year old brought up in a fundamentalist Christian household in Queens, NYC. The novel starts with a flashback to 1980, as Josiah is about to take the stage in a large community church to deliver a sermon, which turns out to be a defining moment in his life. Part 1 covers this early period of his life, before the narrative moves to 2005 and his current incarnation, as the owner of a computer store in Otter, California, when he finds out that he must return to his childhood home to investigate the increasingly erratic behaviour of his father.
The book was far too busy for me. Too many threads and themes that weren't necessarily explored in the detail that would've made them worthwhile, like the childhood friend who disappeared, the Hindu girlfriend he has as a teenager, his relationship with his wife, his business acumen or lack of it-all on top of the central thread of the father son relationship. Bizarrely there was a final chapter set in 1805, to which I found it really difficult to dedicate my attention, as irritating as it was.
I'm wondering if this is a writer's book, people maybe fawning over how it well it is crafted. As a reader, I look for a story that I can appreciate or one that will entertain me, and unfortunately this did neither of these things for me.
The book is mainly written from the point of view of recently divorced Josiah Laudermilk, a 37 year old brought up in a fundamentalist Christian household in Queens, NYC. The novel starts with a flashback to 1980, as Josiah is about to take the stage in a large community church to deliver a sermon, which turns out to be a defining moment in his life. Part 1 covers this early period of his life, before the narrative moves to 2005 and his current incarnation, as the owner of a computer store in Otter, California, when he finds out that he must return to his childhood home to investigate the increasingly erratic behaviour of his father.
The book was far too busy for me. Too many threads and themes that weren't necessarily explored in the detail that would've made them worthwhile, like the childhood friend who disappeared, the Hindu girlfriend he has as a teenager, his relationship with his wife, his business acumen or lack of it-all on top of the central thread of the father son relationship. Bizarrely there was a final chapter set in 1805, to which I found it really difficult to dedicate my attention, as irritating as it was.
I'm wondering if this is a writer's book, people maybe fawning over how it well it is crafted. As a reader, I look for a story that I can appreciate or one that will entertain me, and unfortunately this did neither of these things for me.
August 27, 2014
Stunning, bold and beautiful. This may be Cheshire’s first novel, but from the first page it is clear to readers that they are in the gentle hands of a master craftsman. The story of reluctant child prophet Josiah Laudermilk oscillates throughout time, dipping and spinning through present, past and history, creating a multi-layered portrait of the American religious experience. The narrative focuses on Josiah’s return to his ailing, mentally unstable father and their complicated relationship, but also explores haunting questions: what does it mean to believe? To embrace doubt? To love and be loved in return? To what extend are we shaped by those that came before us? High as the Horses' Bridles is thought provoking without straying from the essential elements of a near perfectly crafted story. Well-done!
November 13, 2014
Cheshire's debut, while not flawless, is absolutely striking. The small missteps, some unevenness with the protagonist's unfolding characterization, are dwarfed by his emotional generosity and eloquent treatment of faith. Where lesser authors might have overshot, heavy-handedly using religiosity and faith to tell the story of humanity's shortcomings, our thirst for redemption, our relentless pursuit of the Holy Other; Cheshire remains focused. Though the Laudermilk family reveals plenty about the nature of man, the narrative never becomes inflated, overly aggrandized.
The first chapter is highly reminiscent of Delillo's breathless prologue to Underworld. A 'super omniscience' that reels the reader in media res to a church congregation awaiting a sermon. From there, the narrative unfolds to deliver truths on faith and love, on examining why life and loss are one in the same. A superb debut.
The first chapter is highly reminiscent of Delillo's breathless prologue to Underworld. A 'super omniscience' that reels the reader in media res to a church congregation awaiting a sermon. From there, the narrative unfolds to deliver truths on faith and love, on examining why life and loss are one in the same. A superb debut.
August 30, 2014
Cheshire's first novel is a book I am supposed to say is excellent on artistic grounds. It has flowing poetic prose, vivid imagery, and sweeping, detailed depictions of fanatical church life in a small congregation in 1980s Queens. It is a story of a man's lost hope and his nostalgic remembering of his childhood neighborhood as he confronts his ailing father spiraling after the loss of his mother.
The book doesn't tell a coherent or complete story, though. And, it also turns the church community into a caricature that is not a fair depiction of flourishing churches in NYC today.
I can see the potential here, and I enjoyed some of the amazing writing, but I predict Mr. Cheshire's next title will be the break out.
The book doesn't tell a coherent or complete story, though. And, it also turns the church community into a caricature that is not a fair depiction of flourishing churches in NYC today.
I can see the potential here, and I enjoyed some of the amazing writing, but I predict Mr. Cheshire's next title will be the break out.
February 20, 2014
Structurally, I'm reminded of UNDERWORLD, albeit dealing with fundamentalist Christianity, visions, and what a belief in the certainty of the apocalypse will do to one's head.
September 4, 2014
An Emotionally Intense Fictional Depiction of Contemporary Fundamentalist Christian Faith
In the streetwise realism of 1980 and present-day Queens, New York, Scott Chesire's "High as the Horses' Bridles", echoes the gritty realism found in the best novels of Pete Hamill and Jimmy Breslin. But it is more, much more, than a very good New York City-centric novel bordering on greatness. Its universal themes of seeking love and redemption should appeal to those unfamiliar with New York City, a debut American novel that may well earn ample praise from a worldwide audience, simply for its intensely psychological portrayal of its main protagonist Josiah (Josie) Laudermilk, whose defining moment in life comes at the age of twelve, when, as a child preacher in a Queens movie theater - turned - church, he announces an apocalyptic vision of Christ's return to the audience. Much to his credit, Cheshire has written an intelligent, often profound, and emotionally resonating, fictional exploration of Fundamentalist Protestant Christianity in the most unlikely of settings, the Borough of Queens in New York City, with a compelling protagonist, Josie, the adult Josiah, embarked on a life-long quest to arrive at some semblance of normalcy, beginning with severing his emotional and intellectual ties with his faith. A faith still possessing the mind and soul of his dying father, whom Josie finds living a most destitute existence in their Queens home, even after father and son formally abandoned that faith decades ago.
Cheshire has written a psychologically gripping epic into the depths of Josie's heart and soul, even as he takes us on a journey encompassing both Los Angeles and New York City, as well as into the past, to a tent revival meeting somewhere in rural Kentucky at the dawn of the 19th Century. He introduces us to an emotionally scarred protagonist, who, as an adult, is unable to come to terms with the deaths of two friends from his youth, and especially, his mother, who loses a long-term battle with cancer. From the very first page until the very last, Cheshire demonstrates that he is both a master storyteller and a superb prose stylist, yielding a debut novel which has reminded others of the likes of Feodor Dostoyevsky, E. L. Doctorow and Don DeLillo, and writing one that is more the work of a writer at the height of his creative powers, than as a debut novelist. Cheshire's depiction of Josie's relationship with his father may be the most memorable one I have encountered in recent mainstream literary fiction, and one that will interest readers. "High as the Horses' Bridles" is not just one of the finest debut novels published this year; its publication announces the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary American fiction destined for greatness.
In the streetwise realism of 1980 and present-day Queens, New York, Scott Chesire's "High as the Horses' Bridles", echoes the gritty realism found in the best novels of Pete Hamill and Jimmy Breslin. But it is more, much more, than a very good New York City-centric novel bordering on greatness. Its universal themes of seeking love and redemption should appeal to those unfamiliar with New York City, a debut American novel that may well earn ample praise from a worldwide audience, simply for its intensely psychological portrayal of its main protagonist Josiah (Josie) Laudermilk, whose defining moment in life comes at the age of twelve, when, as a child preacher in a Queens movie theater - turned - church, he announces an apocalyptic vision of Christ's return to the audience. Much to his credit, Cheshire has written an intelligent, often profound, and emotionally resonating, fictional exploration of Fundamentalist Protestant Christianity in the most unlikely of settings, the Borough of Queens in New York City, with a compelling protagonist, Josie, the adult Josiah, embarked on a life-long quest to arrive at some semblance of normalcy, beginning with severing his emotional and intellectual ties with his faith. A faith still possessing the mind and soul of his dying father, whom Josie finds living a most destitute existence in their Queens home, even after father and son formally abandoned that faith decades ago.
Cheshire has written a psychologically gripping epic into the depths of Josie's heart and soul, even as he takes us on a journey encompassing both Los Angeles and New York City, as well as into the past, to a tent revival meeting somewhere in rural Kentucky at the dawn of the 19th Century. He introduces us to an emotionally scarred protagonist, who, as an adult, is unable to come to terms with the deaths of two friends from his youth, and especially, his mother, who loses a long-term battle with cancer. From the very first page until the very last, Cheshire demonstrates that he is both a master storyteller and a superb prose stylist, yielding a debut novel which has reminded others of the likes of Feodor Dostoyevsky, E. L. Doctorow and Don DeLillo, and writing one that is more the work of a writer at the height of his creative powers, than as a debut novelist. Cheshire's depiction of Josie's relationship with his father may be the most memorable one I have encountered in recent mainstream literary fiction, and one that will interest readers. "High as the Horses' Bridles" is not just one of the finest debut novels published this year; its publication announces the arrival of a major new voice in contemporary American fiction destined for greatness.
July 25, 2014
Totally engrossing. An un-sappy father/son/holy spirit relationship story that kicks off with a 12-year-old preacher predicting the end of days in a perfectly detailed Queens of 1980 (complete with milk carton kids). As interesting as that was, the story really picks up steam when the world doesn't end and the adult version of the child preacher has to come to terms with his loss of faith and complicated relationships with his father and ex-wife.
For the first time in my life I wanted a flight to be longer b/c I was 60 pages from the end and really wanted to know how it all shook out.
For the first time in my life I wanted a flight to be longer b/c I was 60 pages from the end and really wanted to know how it all shook out.
June 21, 2021
I picked this up because Phil Klay, the author of Redeployment, said in an interview, “One of my friends, Scott Cheshire, wrote a beautiful book about faith called High as the Horses’ Bridles. Scott is not a believer himself, though he was raised in the Jehovah’s Witnesses and used to give sermons as a child, and the novel approaches questions of faith with the same degree of respect and serious consideration that any great believing writer would. It’s a challenging and provocative read.” It is that.
A bio of Cheshire on the Gotham Writers site says that “in the back of every New World Bible (the official Witness translation), there are appendices that include maps and ‘scholarly references’ supporting a literalist reading of the Bible. Ironically, it was the inclusion of these references, designed to keep believers in place, that led Scott ‘astray.’ Scott realized how terribly flawed the so-called scholarly references were in that they merely propped up the Jehovah’s Witness agenda. He researched secular criticism along with histories of American Christianity, Mormonism, and Seventh Day Adventists.”
In college Cheshire found that even sacred texts steal. “Good writers steal or are at least influenced,” he says. “The writers of Genesis stole or borrowed from other religious texts.” He attended church less and less and even skipping the much-revered “Last Supper” celebration.
Ultimately, he began exploring fiction, began writing fiction, published short stories, and earned an MFA in fiction from Hunter College.
High as the Horses’ Bridles is the story of a believer who stops believing, his father, mother, and ex-wife. The title refers to how deeply the blood will rise when God brings about the Apocalypse. In the first chapter, 12-year-old Josiah Laudermilk is a boy preacher speaking to an audience of 4,000 in what had been a Queens, NY, movie palace, now the sect’s church. Josiah, his spirit fired by the crowd, announces to the believers that in fact the world will end in twenty years, on December 31, 1999.
Twenty-five years later, the world has not ended. Josiah returns from California to the Queens family home. He is divorced. He owns a shaky computer retail business. After growing to four stores, Otter Computing has shriveled to one with one employee, Josiah best friend Amad Singh, who keep the business afloat. His mother has died after suffering for several years with with the onset, remission, and return of cancer. And his father, Gill, has retreated into his faith, allowing the house and his health to deteriorate.
While Josiah has given up on the church although not (apparently) on his belief in God, his father has become obsessed with living by the rules of the Bible that mean the most to him. For example, that one should lie down beside the still waters means that Gill has moved a cot in the bathroom so he can sleep beside the filled bathtub. Everything that happens, happens for a reason. In a scene between Gill, Josiah, his mother and church elders, Gill says:
“I want to be a true believer, it’s all I’ve ever wanted out of life . . . And my wife. She wears a hat so you don’t have to see her shining head. For you! You think this is sickness? This is God’s work! All of it God’s work! All of them signs we are living in the End Days, and you won’t even see it. Look to the book of Matthew. In the Last Days. The Apostle Matthew says in the End Days one shall be taken, but the other left behind—”
High as the Horses’ Bridles puts us in the consciousness of white, middle-class American man who in his mid-thirties is trying to make sense of the world and his own history. Josiah does not debate his father or the tenets of his church. The novel does not question the inerrancy of the Bible’s stories, nor does it suggest that there may be questions about or inconsistencies in the stories.
The book does convey the difficulty of loving someone who seems hell-bent on harming himself in a mad quest for . . . what? Transcendence? Ultimate truth? Death? At times I found Josiah irritatingly indecisive. I wanted to tell him: Clean the damned house of the cat crap! Don’t let your father continue to live in such filth! Do something even if it’s wrong!
Eventually, with the unexpected help of his ex-wife, he does. His friend, Amad back at the store in California, never gives up on him (or the store). And in an extraordinary coda, Cheshire ends the novel with a story of religious transfiguration in Woodford, Kentucky, in 1801. It alone is worth the price of admission.
A bio of Cheshire on the Gotham Writers site says that “in the back of every New World Bible (the official Witness translation), there are appendices that include maps and ‘scholarly references’ supporting a literalist reading of the Bible. Ironically, it was the inclusion of these references, designed to keep believers in place, that led Scott ‘astray.’ Scott realized how terribly flawed the so-called scholarly references were in that they merely propped up the Jehovah’s Witness agenda. He researched secular criticism along with histories of American Christianity, Mormonism, and Seventh Day Adventists.”
In college Cheshire found that even sacred texts steal. “Good writers steal or are at least influenced,” he says. “The writers of Genesis stole or borrowed from other religious texts.” He attended church less and less and even skipping the much-revered “Last Supper” celebration.
Ultimately, he began exploring fiction, began writing fiction, published short stories, and earned an MFA in fiction from Hunter College.
High as the Horses’ Bridles is the story of a believer who stops believing, his father, mother, and ex-wife. The title refers to how deeply the blood will rise when God brings about the Apocalypse. In the first chapter, 12-year-old Josiah Laudermilk is a boy preacher speaking to an audience of 4,000 in what had been a Queens, NY, movie palace, now the sect’s church. Josiah, his spirit fired by the crowd, announces to the believers that in fact the world will end in twenty years, on December 31, 1999.
Twenty-five years later, the world has not ended. Josiah returns from California to the Queens family home. He is divorced. He owns a shaky computer retail business. After growing to four stores, Otter Computing has shriveled to one with one employee, Josiah best friend Amad Singh, who keep the business afloat. His mother has died after suffering for several years with with the onset, remission, and return of cancer. And his father, Gill, has retreated into his faith, allowing the house and his health to deteriorate.
While Josiah has given up on the church although not (apparently) on his belief in God, his father has become obsessed with living by the rules of the Bible that mean the most to him. For example, that one should lie down beside the still waters means that Gill has moved a cot in the bathroom so he can sleep beside the filled bathtub. Everything that happens, happens for a reason. In a scene between Gill, Josiah, his mother and church elders, Gill says:
“I want to be a true believer, it’s all I’ve ever wanted out of life . . . And my wife. She wears a hat so you don’t have to see her shining head. For you! You think this is sickness? This is God’s work! All of it God’s work! All of them signs we are living in the End Days, and you won’t even see it. Look to the book of Matthew. In the Last Days. The Apostle Matthew says in the End Days one shall be taken, but the other left behind—”
High as the Horses’ Bridles puts us in the consciousness of white, middle-class American man who in his mid-thirties is trying to make sense of the world and his own history. Josiah does not debate his father or the tenets of his church. The novel does not question the inerrancy of the Bible’s stories, nor does it suggest that there may be questions about or inconsistencies in the stories.
The book does convey the difficulty of loving someone who seems hell-bent on harming himself in a mad quest for . . . what? Transcendence? Ultimate truth? Death? At times I found Josiah irritatingly indecisive. I wanted to tell him: Clean the damned house of the cat crap! Don’t let your father continue to live in such filth! Do something even if it’s wrong!
Eventually, with the unexpected help of his ex-wife, he does. His friend, Amad back at the store in California, never gives up on him (or the store). And in an extraordinary coda, Cheshire ends the novel with a story of religious transfiguration in Woodford, Kentucky, in 1801. It alone is worth the price of admission.
June 7, 2018
This book is truly stunning. The synopsis had me hooked before I even cracked it open. Josie is a hell of a character, and shows that you can never really go home again, in a way that I've never really seen before. Understanding how such a church works is something not a lot of people can get so spot on. The opening chapters feel free of bias and I almost wished it would continue for the rest of the book, the attention to detail. I think this should be a must read for those that are struggling with their faith outside of their family, it's incredibly eye opening.
I'm sad that this is one of those little known books, with a few reviews. I picked it up in the bargain books section of my book store, it being on clearance, and there were many copies. I hope more will read it, but I know the more I rave about it, only a few will actually take it on.
I'm sad that this is one of those little known books, with a few reviews. I picked it up in the bargain books section of my book store, it being on clearance, and there were many copies. I hope more will read it, but I know the more I rave about it, only a few will actually take it on.
July 20, 2014
Copy received through Goodreads’ First Reads program.
Some years ago, I was sitting in a class suffering through a particularly opaque European art film when the professor leaned over to my friend and said, “I already know I’m a dumb audience member. I don’t need this movie to tell me that.” I’ve thought of that moment often when I’ve encountered difficult movies or novels like this one, and although I really enjoyed a great deal of this novel - particularly its vivid, powerful, untethered writing - I was left scratching my head a bit. (Or, more precisely, I can sum up the final forty pages in one word: “Huh?”)
This book tells the story of Josiah Laudermilk, a teenage religious wunderkind who memorizes large swaths of scripture and occasionally preaches in Queens in some kind of Jehovah’s Witness-esque church (I’m assuming they’re Jehovah’s Witness-esque, since that’s the community that the author grew up in, but since I know next to nothing about the J Dubs other than Michael Jackson used to be one and that they go door to door to bother people, that’s not based on anything beyond a lazy “assume all writing is autobiographical” guess.) In the opening brief section of the novel, set in 1980, Josiah makes a bold prediction during one such sermon, setting up repercussions for his entire family. The real meat of the novel occurs in 2005, when Josiah (now called “Josie”) returns from his decidedly secular life in Los Angeles to Queens to visit his ailing, crazed father, who is living in the thin line between religious devotion and insanity. Scott Cheshire builds these first two sections up well, with a crackling energy that evokes Don Delillo, and a stream of consciousness style that prevents the reader from ever quite knowing where the story is headed next. (I certainly didn’t foresee the third part of the story, which jumps briefly back to 1800s Kentucky for reasons that other people seemed to love but I just didn’t get).
There is a beauty and depth in Cheshire’s descriptions of religion, and he aptly and sympathetically portrays how intense religious fervor sets one apart from the more general community and from other members of one’s own family. I enjoyed that ride, and Cheshire’s definitely a skilled writer with a lot to say, but my confusion over the final part of the novel made the ending too unsatisfying for me to give this anything more than three stars.
Some years ago, I was sitting in a class suffering through a particularly opaque European art film when the professor leaned over to my friend and said, “I already know I’m a dumb audience member. I don’t need this movie to tell me that.” I’ve thought of that moment often when I’ve encountered difficult movies or novels like this one, and although I really enjoyed a great deal of this novel - particularly its vivid, powerful, untethered writing - I was left scratching my head a bit. (Or, more precisely, I can sum up the final forty pages in one word: “Huh?”)
This book tells the story of Josiah Laudermilk, a teenage religious wunderkind who memorizes large swaths of scripture and occasionally preaches in Queens in some kind of Jehovah’s Witness-esque church (I’m assuming they’re Jehovah’s Witness-esque, since that’s the community that the author grew up in, but since I know next to nothing about the J Dubs other than Michael Jackson used to be one and that they go door to door to bother people, that’s not based on anything beyond a lazy “assume all writing is autobiographical” guess.) In the opening brief section of the novel, set in 1980, Josiah makes a bold prediction during one such sermon, setting up repercussions for his entire family. The real meat of the novel occurs in 2005, when Josiah (now called “Josie”) returns from his decidedly secular life in Los Angeles to Queens to visit his ailing, crazed father, who is living in the thin line between religious devotion and insanity. Scott Cheshire builds these first two sections up well, with a crackling energy that evokes Don Delillo, and a stream of consciousness style that prevents the reader from ever quite knowing where the story is headed next. (I certainly didn’t foresee the third part of the story, which jumps briefly back to 1800s Kentucky for reasons that other people seemed to love but I just didn’t get).
There is a beauty and depth in Cheshire’s descriptions of religion, and he aptly and sympathetically portrays how intense religious fervor sets one apart from the more general community and from other members of one’s own family. I enjoyed that ride, and Cheshire’s definitely a skilled writer with a lot to say, but my confusion over the final part of the novel made the ending too unsatisfying for me to give this anything more than three stars.
May 22, 2014
This is one of those books that after you finish it make you really wonder what you just read.
And for most books that's probably a negative but oddly enough it was this book's brilliance as a novel that made question this.
Looking back I'm not sure what I expected this book to be about but I'm pretty sure it wasn't this.
In all honesty it blew those expectations away.
This is a story that moves through time pretty freely. It's not linear in the perfect sense of the word. You glimpse time out of order but in an order that makes things more perfect in some way. All of which revolves around Josiah (now Josie) and his relationship with his father and ex-wife. However there is another main character that has just as great of impact; religion. All three of these characters have had a different relationship with religion and religious past and this drives the conflicts between them.
As someone who has studied religion for a while now and foresees doing so for the rest of his life, this made perfect sense and it rings true to life in the wide perspectives that people have on religion. Whether believers or not, everyone has an opinion on this one issue and there's not much else that seems to fit that criteria. Scott Cheshire does a great job of tapping into this and while being critical of religious traditions and belief systems never seems to be pushing a particular POV on the reader except one that forces you to see religion from both Josie and his father's perspectives.
It was a truly beautiful novel that seemed to be almost a version of The Death of Ivan Illyich set in the Bronx and California due to its perspectives on death, suffering, and religion.
And honestly, I think that's about the strongest praise I could give this book.
Thank you to Goodreads Firstreads giveaways for giving me an opportunity to read an ARC of this. It was absolutely great.
And for most books that's probably a negative but oddly enough it was this book's brilliance as a novel that made question this.
Looking back I'm not sure what I expected this book to be about but I'm pretty sure it wasn't this.
In all honesty it blew those expectations away.
This is a story that moves through time pretty freely. It's not linear in the perfect sense of the word. You glimpse time out of order but in an order that makes things more perfect in some way. All of which revolves around Josiah (now Josie) and his relationship with his father and ex-wife. However there is another main character that has just as great of impact; religion. All three of these characters have had a different relationship with religion and religious past and this drives the conflicts between them.
As someone who has studied religion for a while now and foresees doing so for the rest of his life, this made perfect sense and it rings true to life in the wide perspectives that people have on religion. Whether believers or not, everyone has an opinion on this one issue and there's not much else that seems to fit that criteria. Scott Cheshire does a great job of tapping into this and while being critical of religious traditions and belief systems never seems to be pushing a particular POV on the reader except one that forces you to see religion from both Josie and his father's perspectives.
It was a truly beautiful novel that seemed to be almost a version of The Death of Ivan Illyich set in the Bronx and California due to its perspectives on death, suffering, and religion.
And honestly, I think that's about the strongest praise I could give this book.
Thank you to Goodreads Firstreads giveaways for giving me an opportunity to read an ARC of this. It was absolutely great.
September 8, 2014
I love how this book is a first person story about a relationship between a father and son sandwiched between two very distinct third person narratives. In the first section, we jump around from character to character and by doing this, Cheshire paints the scene for us and it is a scene we need to explore because it returns again and again as we learn about what happens to the protagonist.
I was really taken with the sentences in that first section. The voice reminded me of a guy at the bar who had almost had too many (but not yet, the description is too precise for this to be a drunkard) and this guy is telling us a story, a whopper, and everyone around him is listening and when he's done, somebody is going to buy this guy a drink because he deserves it.
Once we move to first person and the protagonist arrives at his father's house, the story really takes off and becomes about their relationship. And it makes sense that this father son relationship is anchoring the entire book because when we move to the last section, the echoes of that relationship vibrate even though we are in another time completely.
I also noticed that there is some great food writing in this book. All of the descriptions have a way of evoking the place but the descriptions of food are really something. The tacos - where can I get some of those?
Overall, this is about a man who has suffered great loss and as a result pushes the people away who try to love him. In taking care of his father, he changes.
This was not only a great story but the structure made it interesting to read and gives the reader a lot to consider. The story builds and builds and the more I read, the more I fell in love with book. I highly recommend.
I was really taken with the sentences in that first section. The voice reminded me of a guy at the bar who had almost had too many (but not yet, the description is too precise for this to be a drunkard) and this guy is telling us a story, a whopper, and everyone around him is listening and when he's done, somebody is going to buy this guy a drink because he deserves it.
Once we move to first person and the protagonist arrives at his father's house, the story really takes off and becomes about their relationship. And it makes sense that this father son relationship is anchoring the entire book because when we move to the last section, the echoes of that relationship vibrate even though we are in another time completely.
I also noticed that there is some great food writing in this book. All of the descriptions have a way of evoking the place but the descriptions of food are really something. The tacos - where can I get some of those?
Overall, this is about a man who has suffered great loss and as a result pushes the people away who try to love him. In taking care of his father, he changes.
This was not only a great story but the structure made it interesting to read and gives the reader a lot to consider. The story builds and builds and the more I read, the more I fell in love with book. I highly recommend.
September 26, 2014
There has been a trickle of recent books that want to treat religion seriously. These books, while not typically coming from religious writers still want to treat the subject of religion seriously. It's probably a backlash against the Hitchens/Dawkins strain of anti-religious atheism that rose up as a polar opposite to the vocal conservative Christian movements that exploded onto the scene in the 80s. Despite where one's own beliefs may lie American history and culture are too intertwined to be able to be understood apart from each other. Scott Cheshire, a former Jehovah's Witness, has given a story in 3 parts that attempts to show one family's tangled history with apocalyptic religion. The material is compelling and the writing is top notch, but the execution leaves much to be desired. The first section focusing on Josiah delivering a major sermon as a child preacher is without flaw. The middle section however, with Josiah now in middle age, divorced from his wife, family and the church, is deeply flawed. There are some stand out scenes, but the pace is too slow and the woe just keeps piling on. Interesting themes are not developed, while all too much attention is lavished on Josie's inability to move on. The final section brings us back to 200 years to Josiah's ancestor as a boy at a tent revival with an apocalyptic preacher. The section is a unique way to close the circle, but after the long ponderous middle section is simply feels tacked on. This is Cheshire's first novel and he clearly has the skills to do better.
July 18, 2014
This book struck so many chords with me, it's hard to list them all. (But I will try.)
1. The language was gorgeous. Poetic, vivid, memorable and emotional. And it just carried me along through the story and inside Josiah's life.
2. There was so much to think about in terms of family culture and what things we inherit from our parents (and their parents and on and on). How our relationships with our parents change when we realize they aren't infallible.
3. The romantic relationships were so honest and interesting.
4. There were heartbreaking moments from Josiah's past that hit me really hard, which just goes to show how invested I was with the characters.
5. Made me think about what it means to be saved or to try to save someone else.
6. On a personal note, I'm now represented by Scott's agent. And it made me incredibly proud that someone who had taken on this gorgeous novel saw some worth in my own writing. Because, honestly, I'm floored.
The structure was unconventional, and I think that was my only trouble I had with the book. The final section took a bit of the wind out of all the feels I was having for Josie and his father. That said: I loved the last section. It was eerie and enlightening, but I still want the last images of Josie to be what I think about in the days to come.
1. The language was gorgeous. Poetic, vivid, memorable and emotional. And it just carried me along through the story and inside Josiah's life.
2. There was so much to think about in terms of family culture and what things we inherit from our parents (and their parents and on and on). How our relationships with our parents change when we realize they aren't infallible.
3. The romantic relationships were so honest and interesting.
4. There were heartbreaking moments from Josiah's past that hit me really hard, which just goes to show how invested I was with the characters.
5. Made me think about what it means to be saved or to try to save someone else.
6. On a personal note, I'm now represented by Scott's agent. And it made me incredibly proud that someone who had taken on this gorgeous novel saw some worth in my own writing. Because, honestly, I'm floored.
The structure was unconventional, and I think that was my only trouble I had with the book. The final section took a bit of the wind out of all the feels I was having for Josie and his father. That said: I loved the last section. It was eerie and enlightening, but I still want the last images of Josie to be what I think about in the days to come.
April 22, 2014
I received this Advance Reader Copy from the Early Reviewers program at LibraryThing. I have no idea (well, okay, I have some) about why I was so captivated by this book. The writer intersperses some pretty philosophical statements into the fictional story, something that can sometimes annoy me. But every time, they so closely resembled my own philosophies that it all rang true. This book is about a boy raised in a fundamentalist cult-like church, he himself being a prophesier from a young age. He's coming home now to care for his aging dad after decades of non-religious life, although he has never lost his deeply spiritual way of looking at life and things. Lots of things for me to relate to here, and this book spoke to me deeply, but was also just a really good story, and commentary on how our faith growing up affects how we deal with life. If this topic interests you, you should put this book on your to-read list.
April 1, 2015
This was one of The Millions’s most anticipated releases for August, and I picked it up because the summary sounded interesting: Child prodigy Jehovah’s Witness preacher in 1980’s Queens prophesies the apocalypse in 2000. He grows up, grows away from the church, and away from his family. The Kid Prophet stuff was interesting, but the majority of the book was concerned with the father/son dynamic between a grownup Josiah Laudermilk and his declining father. I wasn’t captured by this (maybe it was too much White Dude Angst for me) but I’m glad I hung on until the end because I loved the historical epilogue. Cheshire uses some very inventive language to describe typical NYC scenes (The only thing that is springing to mind now that I don’t have the book in my possession is the comparison of a street cart to an exposed elevator car), which makes this a solid “New York novel.”
April 2, 2015
When I read the first part of this book I told a friend "I am reading a five star book, unless it falls apart." So, the good news is the book did not fall apart, but the bad news here is that, at least for me, the book did not live up to its early potential. There is some very good writing here and some interesting and thoughtful observations about religion, relationships, place, time, life and death... a whole slew of things. Unfortunately, the powerful writing that I loved at the beginning fades while a story that seemed fairly tightly focused on religion, turns more into a story of relationships and family. The book concludes with a return to the religion theme -- aside from being overwritten, it feels a bit out of place and, in some ways, is only a reminder that this could have had a far more intriguing plot
June 22, 2016
I could tell about 40 pages in that I was going to like, but not love, this book, and I was right.
The prose is great, the ideas work, and the interplay between the character's past and his present enable Cheshire to do some nice character work with Josiah/Josie. I wanted to know more about the disappearance of a certain character, but the way that Josie wrestles with desire, especially in relation to his ex-wife, kept me reading.
The plot is neat and tidy, and the downward spiral of Josie's father becomes really compelling once you get past the initial learning curve - I found that Josie's father's dialogue seemed dense and inaccessible early on, as if Cheshire was assuming his readers knew more than we did. The last section, with gorgeous writing, seems a bit tacked on.
Solid novel, nothing spectacular, but I enjoyed it while I read.
The prose is great, the ideas work, and the interplay between the character's past and his present enable Cheshire to do some nice character work with Josiah/Josie. I wanted to know more about the disappearance of a certain character, but the way that Josie wrestles with desire, especially in relation to his ex-wife, kept me reading.
The plot is neat and tidy, and the downward spiral of Josie's father becomes really compelling once you get past the initial learning curve - I found that Josie's father's dialogue seemed dense and inaccessible early on, as if Cheshire was assuming his readers knew more than we did. The last section, with gorgeous writing, seems a bit tacked on.
Solid novel, nothing spectacular, but I enjoyed it while I read.
April 4, 2014
A friend gave me this advanced reader copy based on the title and cover. She thought it would be similar to The Son by Phillip Meyer, which I loved. I can see why she suspected it of being "western," but it isn't, not one bit. I liked the story of a father/son relationship colored by the father's religious devotion to a sect that has been predicting Armageddon for 200 years, but I found parts of it problematic. There seemed to be several major continuity errors, and sometimes the story, which is told mostly in flashback, sagged. I think both of these problems could have been solved with some adjustments to the structure. I still liked it, and the main character's rumination on religion and life are interesting, at times very interesting.
May 20, 2015
The Apocalypse, or Revelation to John, the last book of the Bible, is one of the most difficult to understand because it abounds in unfamiliar and extravagant symbolism, which at best appears unusual to the modern reader. Symbolic language, however, is one of the chief characteristics of apocalyptic literature, of which this book is an outstanding example. Scott Cheshire, with his astonishing High as the Horses’ Bridles, delivers a haunting and complex story that takes us on a journey that touches ground in Queens, New York, California and lastly, a Kentucky farm in the 19th century. It is a book about family, duty, contemporary religion, manic-obsession, but its strongest theme is redemption. It is one of the finest novels I have read this year.
March 5, 2015
A fascinating read about a young man adrift and forced to reconcile with his religious father and all the memories that come with their reintroduction to each other's POV. Some of the violent allusions were challenging to read, but nothing stronger that what one would find in a religious tome. Only two areas of real concern to this reader: the first is the disappearance of Josiah Laudermilk's best friend and the way closure was portrayed in the narrative. The second was the final chapter dealing with Josiah's grandfather and what brought Orr Laudermilk to a spiritual place - it was either masterful or underwhelming and I'm still debating that point internally. Well worth your time, but ultimately not a keeper for the home library. C. Barragan. 3.5.15
September 22, 2014
Moving from an apocalyptic style suitable to the main character's role as a child preacher in the Queens of the 1980's, the author delves gradually into a consideration of his 'designation' by his father as a child prophet, his father's domination of him, his marriage and his own new 'awakening'.
For me, the story moved slowly at first. The author, however, later engrossed me in his private 'revelations' about marital love, familial
devotion and faith. He reveals the underpinnings of the evangelical spirit, a topic that is perhaps not often covered in fiction. His writing style is fine and the book deserves a thoughtful read.
For me, the story moved slowly at first. The author, however, later engrossed me in his private 'revelations' about marital love, familial
devotion and faith. He reveals the underpinnings of the evangelical spirit, a topic that is perhaps not often covered in fiction. His writing style is fine and the book deserves a thoughtful read.
April 26, 2014
The story begins with a bang and then quickly fizzles. A young boy preaches to a huge audience about the coming of the end of the world, and then the story cuts to the present and the disillusion of the now grown man. Josiah Laudermilk enters the story as a boy wonder, but returns home to care for his father as both men grapple with loss of faith. I lost my way in the story and never found the correct door to enjoy the book. I had difficulty with reading this novel, as many sentences made no sense. I constantly reread paragraphs, and still found the meaning obtuse
January 29, 2015
Interesting book.
It showed a portrait of two people-son and father-trying to understand each other, yet continuing to find themselves lost and baffled by the other.
When the son comes back to his childhood home to check on his father, he is disturbed by both his father's living conditions and the state of his father's mind. Through glimpses into the son's memory, it becomes apparent that something has been...not right for some time. At the end of the book the son is still struggling to understand his father and uncertain as what is the right course of action.
It showed a portrait of two people-son and father-trying to understand each other, yet continuing to find themselves lost and baffled by the other.
When the son comes back to his childhood home to check on his father, he is disturbed by both his father's living conditions and the state of his father's mind. Through glimpses into the son's memory, it becomes apparent that something has been...not right for some time. At the end of the book the son is still struggling to understand his father and uncertain as what is the right course of action.
July 22, 2016
They were trampled in the winepress outside the city, and blood flowed out of the press, rising as high as the horses’ bridles for a distance of 1,600 stadia.
I found this book really fascinating but I finished it disappointed and wanting more. More history, more details about the history of the Laudermilks. The details were so striking and the language was great. I just wanted some more of the mysteries that Gil alluded to, to be unpacked for the reader. I know real life can be disappointing in the same way but that left me wanting this book to transcend that experience.
I found this book really fascinating but I finished it disappointed and wanting more. More history, more details about the history of the Laudermilks. The details were so striking and the language was great. I just wanted some more of the mysteries that Gil alluded to, to be unpacked for the reader. I know real life can be disappointing in the same way but that left me wanting this book to transcend that experience.
November 15, 2014
My first thought was to rate this three stars and then I remembered it was a debut novel. Also, when Chesire is on, he's really on.
The first chapter coupled with the last chapter really made this book for me. Seeing it wrap together like that.
The Josie/Sarah aspect of the story sometimes felt like a completely different book at times, but that can be the case with first novels - a bit of a fragmented feel.
But it's deserving of a read for many reasons, not the least of which is that it boldly takes on a partly religious theme without preaching or being found for sale in Wal-Mart.
The first chapter coupled with the last chapter really made this book for me. Seeing it wrap together like that.
The Josie/Sarah aspect of the story sometimes felt like a completely different book at times, but that can be the case with first novels - a bit of a fragmented feel.
But it's deserving of a read for many reasons, not the least of which is that it boldly takes on a partly religious theme without preaching or being found for sale in Wal-Mart.
June 1, 2014
I received a copy of this book free from the Good-Reads First-Reads program. A young boy named Josiah prepares for a speech which will change his life forever. Flash forward years later he comes back to that very same small town to take care of his dying father. The memories of that day come rushing back. The special bond he and his father shared about religion and prophecy. Such a captivating tale. Keeps you reading until the end.
January 8, 2015
Fantastic read. The Book of Revelations has always been one of the most fascinating/confusing books of the Bible for me. My church doesn't focus on it and I can only imagine how my life/faith would be different if growing up, my church had. This would be a fabulous book for a book group. So much to discuss and such strong beliefs behind it. It was not a long book, but did go on a bit in places. My rating is 4.5 (rounding up.)
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