Wise Blood

Hazel Motes returns from the army to find his Tennessee hometown deserted and his family gone. With a fierce black hat and a suit still bearing its price tag, he heads to the city of Taulkinham with a singular mission: to escape the shadow of his grandfather, a fire-and-brimstone circuit preacher, by preaching a new gospel—the Church Without Christ.

In a world populated by blind street preachers, con men, and lonely souls, Motes’s dark crusade draws a following of misfits, including a young man obsessed with a mummified corpse and a scheming teenager. As he rails against redemption, his own violent nature and desperate longing for nothingness put him on a collision course with the very grace he denies. A Southern Gothic tour de force, this novel is a savage, darkly comic exploration of faith, doubt, and the treacherous path to salvation.