Lay Your Armor Down
A Novel
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- 11,99 €
Publisher Description
One of NPR's Books of the Year
A "prophetic, propulsive" tale of one mysterious, messianic child with untold powers who draws three desperate souls into acts of mercy and mayhem. (Scott Blackburn)
An old woman, riddled with dementia, walks off into the woods in the middle of the night. A light in the wood draws her to a campfire with two strange, dangerous men, one young and one old, who are there plotting a crime of as-yet-indeterminate purpose. The two men have a job to do. They are hunting something precious but have only been told: you’ll know it when you see it. When they arrive at the place, an abandoned church cellar in the burned-out countryside, they find an answer they never could have predicted. Now, the job feels dubious, one that’ll surely bring them to ruin. Yet if they’re to go against orders, no step can be undone, and nothing can be taken back.
In spare, imagistic prose, Lay Your Armor Down reduces the epic to its most elemental. It charts the course of several broken people, all outrunning danger’s dark fingers, and all brought together for one last chance at redemption.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Smith (Salvage This World) unspools an atmospheric and spare Southern gothic of two unsavory men on a mysterious criminal odyssey and their encounter with a mystical young girl. At the story's center are the brutal Burdean and the haunted Keal, the latter of whom has premonition-filled dreams. Together, they travel through a blasted landscape of kudzu and wildfire embers. As Burdean explains to Keal, their mission is to enter the cellar of a particular church, where their task will reveal itself to them: "Whatever it is we'll know it when we see it." They find the church at the edge of a swamp, with the bodies of four dead men propped against the door. Inside, they retrieve what proves to be their quarry: a young girl who Keal senses is the one "responsible for the lighting of his dreams." With the girl in tow, the men continue on until they're tracked down by a woman named Cara, who understands the girl's power. As more betrayals and uncanny events ensue, the body count rises to an apocalyptic level. Smith sustains a feeling of slow-burning dread, shot through with vivid bursts of biblical imagery. This bracing fever dream is worth a look.
