The Kneeling Bus

"Perfect, dazzling stories that show you the world in a way you've never ever seen before." –Carolyn See, Los Angeles Times
 
These eight connected stories depict Carrie Willis's coming-of-age as the daughter of a liberal minister in the Florida of the 1950s. Beverly Coyle's tropical landscape is quietly rural, relentlessly Methodist –lovely, lovely, and self-doubting. Her writing is as intimate as a memoir, and her stories take odd, voyeuristic turns: we meet Carrie's grandmother, a Seventh-day Adventist convert, much to the consternation of her family; a boy who feeds his pet leeches from blood-filled rubber gloves; the daughter of wealthy orchid growers who is killed by a truck on a rainy highway; and Carrie's great-aunt Dove, who falls for a con man who preaches the miracle of Direct Dialing. Actually arranging a promised call to Dr. Norman Vincent Peale may be the one honest thing he does.
 
By turns hilarious, poignant, and heart-wrenching, The Kneeling Bus chronicles the small shames and deep mortifications of a narrator who once dreamed herself into a mission field of the Congo—before she lost her nerve.
 
"Beverly Coyle employs so light a touch in this warm and wise novel that it completely charms us long before we feel how much it has taught us."—St. Petersburg Times