Revelator

1

1933

Stella wallace met her family s god when she was nine years old. Later, she couldn t figure out why she didn t run when she saw it. It wasn t fear that pinned her to the spot, staring up at it, or even shock. It was something else. Awe, maybe. Wonder so deep it was almost adoration.

Pa said she d been born in the cove but they d left when she was too young to remember it. This was where her ma was born too, and where she d come back to die when she got sick. Where all the Birches before her had lived and died. He d never told Stella much more about it than that. He was a quiet man, could go days on a dozen words, like a camel crossing the desert. The day before, they d spent twelve hours together in the truck going from Chicago to Lexington, then another four this morning driving into the mountains, and the whole time the only one doing any talking was the truck, engine whining up the foothills, brakes complaining on the way down. Then the biggest climb, to the top of Rich Mountain. At the gap Pa pulled into a gravel overlook. He poured water into the Ford s ticking radiator, then rolled himself a cigarette. Stella crept to the edge of the gravel and peered down at a valley spread open like a green pool.

Is that it? This is the cove?

Pa nodded.

Where s Motty s house?

Her father squinted. Stupid question, she thought. Probably couldn t see it from here. She didn t expect him to answer, and then he pointed his cigarette at a high mountain to the east. That s Thunderhead. And over there . . . The tip of the cigarette swung south, pointed at a high, round bulge. That s yourn. Birch Bald.

My mountain, she thought. Not his.

Motty s is straight down from there.

They followed the twisting road into a valley as bright and warm as a bowl of light. Pa pulled onto a rutted lane, finally rolled to a stop in a grassy clearing in front of a white, tin-roofed house. A short ways off to the side, a gray, unpainted barn sat askew as if

DARYL GREGORY is the author of Spoonbenders, Afterparty, The Devil's Alphabet, and other novels. His novella We Are All Completely Fine won the World Fantasy Award and the Shirley Jackson Award. 

ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

Revelator is a thing of beauty, brutal in the vein of Cormac McCarthy, a novel in the Southern Gothic tradition that is fresh and deeply disturbing.
Danielle Trussoni, The New York Times

Revelator is a brisk work of Southern Gothic horror and an intriguing, female-centric portrait of a family in conflict. It s funny, too . . . [Stella is] a complex character, a pleasure to follow for 300-plus pages . . . An intrafamilial battle ensues, fueling the book s eventful closing chapters and solving some mysteries surrounding the god. Kevin Canfield, San Francisco Chronicle

In Revelator, Gregory has constructed a twisty, unnerving story that reveals its secrets [judiciously] . . . [Gregory] has a talent for writing outcasts, for conjuring empathy and sympathy for those left to toil in the margins. That talent is certainly on display in Revelator, where it s damn near impossible not to root for Stella but also for the family of choice she finds along the way . . . Revelator is a book of few heroes and many villains, but more than anything, it s a book for the people mostly women who get caught in the path of both.
Nicole Hill, Tor Nightfire

Daryl Gregory never fails to conjure a uniquely enthralling reading experience. With Revelator, he expertly mixes Tennessee bootlegging, the fervor of old time religion, and a new, hungry god in the mountain. Humane, heady, and thrilling, you'll believe in Revelator."
Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and Survivor Song

Gods and moonshine in the Great Depression, written with a tenderness and brutality only Daryl Gregory could have done this is as good as novels get.
Stephen Graham Jones, author of The Only Good Indians

Revelator is a brilliant, dark examination of glorious horror and horrific glory. A monstrous, hypnotic tale of worship, devotion, and family secrets I'll be