Safe Return Doubtful

This fits one of my favourite micro-genres, that of dodgy preachers. Back to that later..

It is also probably Caldwell’s most controversial novel. His publisher, in 1935, was forced to initially issue a very limited number of copies, and to include with it a disclaimer..

Frankly, we feel that we did our job for Caldwell in defending God’s Little Acre in the courts. Although we deeply resent the idea of appearing to be pornography publishers, we don’t think that it is our job to go on spending our time and money on legal battles. Unfortunately, the new book, though as inoffensive to intelligent readers as God’s Little Acre was, is even more vulnerable from Mr. Sumner’s point of view, and would be sure to be attacked if published in a regular edition.

It is the story of a journeyman preacher, as Caldwell’s own father was, whose chief interest seems to be sexual assault and experimentation at every chance along the way. It makes Tobacco Road read like a child’s nursery rhyme in comparison.

When preacher Semon Dye moves into the tiny Georgia town of Rocky Comfort, many of its residents welcome him. The only church is being used to store fertiliser, religion has fallen to the wayside. But sermons aren’t a priority for the tall, charismatic, and utterly dissolute man. Other callings demand his interest; women, whiskey, gambling, and hiding from the law. Even as he seduces wives and young girls, cheats at cards, and provokes old feuds, Dye casts a dark spell over all the people in Rocky Comfort, and all this before he gets the chance to preach on Sunday.

As with other such ‘dodgy preacher’ novels, this is a mischievous satire on religious fervour of the day. Semon Dye joins that select band of most disgraceful and yet quite memorable characters in fiction.

Raising a glass to those other dodgy preachers..

Hazel Motes, the preacher of anti-religion in O’Connor’s Wise Blood.
McCarthy’s No Country For Old Men, and Blood Meridian (Judge Holden),
Harry Powell in Grubb’s Night of the Hunter.

My GoodReads score 5 / 5