Each fully developed character has a role to play in this moving and unusual novel, a homespun Pilgrim's Progress set at a dairy farm on Big Sugar River in East Tennessee in 1961. When twelve-year-old Leonard Bush loses his leg in a freak accident, a chain of miraculous and catastrophic events is set in motion, inevitable as the dire judgment of the local Primitive Baptist Church. Leonard's rigid, God-fearing mother, June; his secret-bearing father, Emmett; Leonard's best friend, Azalea, and her troubled mother, Rose, the local whore, are only the protagonists in a story played out by the entire community. Gilmore knows how to move the suspenseful events right along to its brilliant and moving conclusion. A big, generous novel, a really good read.Lee Smith, The Last Girls and Silver Alert
The Curious Calling of Leonard Bush is by turns sweet, deepest-dark, hilarious, poignant, grotesque, thrilling, and oh-so-human. Its above all moving: the Southern spirit climbing mountains then tumbling down, then climbing once more, all with one leg. Im from Maine, and couldnt help thinking of Carolyn Chutes The Beans of Egypt, Maine. But here is a book of the South, from a writer who knows the territory as William Faulkner knew his, with a cast of characters as eccentric and individual as those in As I Lay Dying, but all the more human here, more loving and loved. Susan Gregg Gilmore has a big enough heart to contain it all. I was sad to see it end, to wake to the real world, and so Im settling in to read it again, right now, email and headlines and obligations be damned.Bill Roorbach, Life Among Giants, Lucky Turtle, and The Remedy for Love
The Curious Calling of Leonard Bush is a call to readers to stop what theyre doing and read! Humorous, heartfelt, and sometimes harrowing, Susan Gregg Gilmore introduces us to a compelling cast of characters and a community built on a system of give-and-take. At the center of it all is young Leonard, his early loss a transforming lesson to everyone around him.Jill McCorkle, Old Crimes and Life After Life