Sister Liberty

by Gregory Hill

Overview

Their American Dream was simply to survive. They managed considerably more than that.

With its cast of obedient romantics, mystical nutbags, and adorable cynics, Sister Liberty is the rollicking, thunderous introductory volume to The Stables Family Chronicles.

In 1885, murderous circumstances force two lesbian widows and a child-philosopher to flee their French village for a new life in Indiana, USA. There, they are welcomed by the Solemnites, a benvolent, quasi-cult that forbids pleasure.

Life is upended when the Solemnites are tapped to host the All-Tent Revival which bills itself as a "multi-denominational marketplace for God." A better description would be "a time-bomb composed of two-hundred rival factions of late-19th-century American crack-pot religious sects."

Three guesses as to who sets off that bomb.

Get ready for an inspirational, satirical, cross-Atlantic anthem to freedom, equality...and sisterhood.

WARNING! THIS NOVEL CONTAINS DESCRIPTIONS OF: whistling, allegorical situations, lesbians, apostasy, and a pleasure wheel. Also: Eleven instances of the word fuck.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798218081690
Publisher:	Daisy Dog Press
Publication date:	12/01/2022
Pages:	418
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.93(d)

Editorial Reviews

08/14/2023

A procession of dunces, philosophers, and cultists strive to better themselves in the witty and outlandish launch to the Stables Family Chronicles from Hill (East of Denver). In 1885 near Sanvisa, France, Arthur Pascal Lestables murders the violent Henri Deplouc and is subsequently hanged. Deplouc’s widow, Euphémie, and Arthur’s widow, Annie, along with her 11-year-old son, Auguste, flee town together; hungry and destitute, they’re rescued by Sister Honora and her daughter, Pansy, American missionaries sent to France because the country is “notoriously immoral.” Known as Solemnites—kind but solemn people who whistle to express strong emotions—Honora and Pansy offer food and shelter to the trio, in hopes of eventually converting them. After boarding a New York–bound freighter ship (which is coincidentally carrying the Statue of Liberty), the group travels together to the Solemnites’ village in Indiana. The clash between the open-minded and science-embracing French guests and the conservative, religious Americans results in irreverent conversations on the nature of God, with Auguste spouting his beloved father’s philosophical rants. The search for a bothersome three-eared bear, Euphémie and Annie’s romantic relationship, and an emancipating All-Tent Revival round out the proceedings. As satiric as it is thought-provoking, this acerbic tale of enlightenment delights. (Self-published)

Publishers Weekly

A delightful romp through mystics and cults, a fractured American Dream, an immigrant experience of the odd kind, and the rollicking world of the late 1800s...Libraries will find Sister Liberty an outstanding read that is hard to easily categorize but easy on the eye, destined to attract a wide audience looking for a novel that is thought-provokingly original. - Midwest Book Review

Whimsical and entertaining, even as it crescendos to a shocking conclusion - BookLife

From murder to bear hunts to the deconstruction of the guiding principles of an entire religious sect, Sister Liberty is a fully-fledged revolution. - Independent Book Review

Funny and subversive - Kirkus

From the Publisher

2022-12-07
A satirical historical novel about wayfarers caught up in an American religious revival.

The main action of Hill’s tale opens with the hanging of a man in the French village of Sanvisa in 1885. Arthur Lestables is sentenced to death for “the drowning murder of Henri Deplouc Senior, and, furthermore, for being a troublesome pain in the groin at this very moment,” as a magistrate puts it. Arthur, a seemingly inoffensive writer who’d been hard at work on his magnum opus, The Theory of Human Development, is buried by his 11-year-old son, Auguste, and soon after, the boy and his mother, Annie, flee France for the United States. In Indiana, they take refuge with members of a religious group who call themselves the Solemnites; as their name suggests, they take a dim view of all forms of pleasure (“As long as my performance is unmusical,” one of them confesses, “I still get to go to heaven”). When the Solemnites become involved in a religious revival, Auguste and his fellow fugitives get caught up in it, as well. Hill’s story is convoluted and rhetorically intricate in ways that seem decidedly out of fashion in the modern literary moment but fit well in the era in which it is set. The author frequently presents elegant phrasings, usually to striking effect: “In the woods that bordered the path, finches skipped and diddled, spiders reknitted rain-ripped webs, and snails sapped water that dripped from the leaves of saturated trees.” The tale is also replete with tossed-off humor that often lands; when Arthur is allowed some final words before his execution, for instance, he asks, “Do any of you understand human goodness?” and the magistrate snaps, “I’ll have no rhetorical questions out of you, Lestables”; Deplouc, Lestables’ alleged victim, is described as “a stain upon the very concept of table manners.” Overall, the work will have readers both pondering and chuckling.

A funny and subtly subversive historical novel about naïfs in the 19th century.

Kirkus Reviews