At just 14 years old, Lacey May Herd is godshot --- pregnant for God. In her world, the small California town of Peaches, God is Pastor Vern, a cape-wearing preacher who, having once delivered a miracle of rain, is on the hook for another such miracle. Birthing Day, when the handful of pregnant teen girls are meant to give birth and give babies to the Body of the church, is the day the rain will finally come to the drought-devastated town. Lacey, though, has begun to see through Vern’s religious theater and questions the community that her family has been part of since her grandfather’s death. Her pregnancy comes after the disappearance of her mother and her budding friendship with Daisy and Florin, a mother and daughter who only have disdain for the church and live on the edge of Peaches in every sense.

GODSHOT is Chelsea Bieker’s curious debut novel, which follows Lacey as she asserts her physical, spiritual and emotional independence from a dysfunctional family and dangerous cult.

"Readers willing to immerse themselves in a novel where real hardships and suffering take some unreal turns will be rewarded with an engrossing story."

After her grandfather’s suicide, which is attributed to the failure of his raisin crops, Lacey’s grandmother, Cherry, joins Vern’s church. Vern has recently returned to Peaches after a long absence, bringing with him a strange haircut, capes, glitter, a passive wife and daughter, and claims of divinity. The members of the Gifts of the Spirit church witness him bringing the rain, and that is enough to seal their loyalty, even when he issues them terrible “assignments.” Lacey’s mother, Louise, is a particular kind of literary mother: beautiful, adrift, damaged. She attracts Vern’s attention and, because she rebuffs him, is given a terrible assignment at a phone sex operation. This establishment, Diviners, is run by Daisy, who in time will come to be a surrogate mother for Lacey.

It is at Diviners where Louise meets Rick, the Turquoise Cowboy, and her situation goes from terrible to horrific, leaving Lacey in the care of Cherry. Cherry’s house is no refuge. Lacey lives in squalid conditions, and Cherry fails to protect her from the sexual abuse that she is “assigned” by Vern. Her resulting pregnancy is meant to usher in life-saving rains. But between her mother’s abandonment, her grandmother’s unwillingness to protect her, and the glimmers of life she begins to imagine beyond the church Body and beyond Peaches, Lacey starts to assert her independence. Her methods are unsettling, but her options are few. Soon, she will have to decide between her allegiance to her mother, her connection to the church, and the new life that her baby can offer her.

GODSHOT is an intense read. Bieker zooms in on a small and insular community, though she presents some compelling universal themes about control and freedom, hope and despair. However, it might be that she includes too much by half: incest, suicides, prostitution, addiction, mania, teen pregnancies, cults, bizarre taxidermy, God glitter, gun violence, and a bull penis cane. She drops readers into a surreal, or perhaps hyperreal, nightmarish world where time seems to have stopped and the sense of dislocation is total. Yes, Central California raisin farms have been hit by years of terrible drought. And the recent California fires are all too real. But there are frighteningly fantastical elements here, baptisms in gallons of soda to name just one, that can become a distraction from the story Bieker is telling.

As a cult leader, Vern is both typical and really over the top. Bieker asks readers to jump to the conclusions of why his followers in Gifts of the Spirit church would go along with his awful plans, but doesn’t always explain the mechanisms of cult psychology. While their poverty and fear are palpable, it is interesting that the only real rebels are two teenage girls. Thank goodness for Lacey, a finely written narrator, who helps readers sort out the messiness and weirdness of the tale.

GODSHOT is dark, to say the least, and flawed in some aspects, but Bieker clearly has a lot of interesting things to say. Readers willing to immerse themselves in a novel where real hardships and suffering take some unreal turns will be rewarded with an engrossing story.