Calling

Evoking visceral images such as a fire-and-brimstone preacher ranting and a deep-voiced deejay spinning country music and reading the local news of fish fries, car wrecks, and church bake sales, this tale digs beneath the surface of the Southern Baptist Church, commercial radio, and small-town manhood. Seated next to each other on a bus headed out of Las Vegas, Southern Baptist preacher and radio evangelist, Ezekiel Blizzard Jr., and country-western deejay, Timber Goodman, would not initially appear to be birds of the same feather. Yet as their ride through the desert progresses, and their hardscrabble stories of childhood, drinking, drug use, gambling, radio, religion, and even violence in the "Christ-haunted South" unfold, they discover their unusual mutual quests for redemption.

"Sam Starnes has crafted a beguiling, often hilarious tale of two American seekers who end up finding truths they hadn't imagined on a bus ride through the desert. Their individual stories are spun in rich, evocative prose that takes the reader into a world of radio evangelists who fall far short of practicing what they preach. Just when we think we understand these sinners comes a shocking denouement that makes us wonder if it's only coincidence that we meet the significant people in our lives. This is one of those novels that resonates long after the final page," said Alice Elliott Dark, author of "In the Gloaming," a short story selected by John Updike for the Best American Short Stories of the Century, and the novel Think of England.