Sign-In
Cart
Shield the Joyous
Audio Book
Currently unavailable to order
Please enter your email and a message will be sent to you when this product becomes available on our website.
Publisher: Skyboat Media
Published: Feb 11 2025
Language: English
Michael Haley, a whip-smart seventh-grader growing up in rural Mississippi in the early 1980s, has a precociously metaphysical turn of mind, a brand-new girlfriend who won't come out of her bedroom, and plenty of neighborhood pals to distract him from both. But as he passes the long afternoon of this story roaming their streets, yards, and woods with the likes of Zeke Barry (his girlfriend's brother and a born skeptic) and John Dixon Montgomery (a diminutive fishing genius plagued by assorted maladies), unsettling questions won't leave Michael alone--like whether God will accept his gift of a dug-up, three-days-dead possum, whether he and his friends are in fact real, and why Ol' Cletus, a mysterious, middle-aged recluse, appears to be stalking him. This last question, above all, will test Michael's courage to seek answers.
With a voice all his own, swinging from sassy to lyrical in its candor, wonder, and spiritual yearning, Michael Haley stands squarely in the tradition of beloved young American narrators that stretches from Huck Finn through Holden Caulfield to Scout Finch. Imagine a cheeky blend of Charles Portis and Stranger Things filtered through St. Augustine and Zhuangzi, and you have some idea of this brilliant debut novel by Chad Holley. Shield the Joyous manages to be both deeply funny and moving in a way that is singularly authentic.
1 different editions
Also available
Also from
Holley, Chad
Also in
Literary Fiction
Elizabeth Spencer: Novels & Stories (Loa #344): The Voice at the Back Door / The Light in the Piazza / Knights and Dragons / Stories
Spencer, Elizabeth
Hardcover
Philip Roth: Novels 1973-1977 (Loa #165): The Great American Novel / My Life as a Man / The Professor of Desire
Roth, Philip
Hardcover
John Updike: Novels 1978-1984 (Loa #339): The Coup / Rabbit Is Rich / The Witches of Eastwick
Updike, John
Hardcover
The Patrick Melrose Novels: Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, and Mother's Milk
St Aubyn, Edward
Paperback