I ALSO want to thank the many people who’ve shaped my thinking about life and the spirit in ways I’m grateful for, with an especial nod to: first and forever foremost my grandmother; Evan and Kyle Rosa; Devann Yata; and Richard Miller.
TO VERNON Ng, for love and intelligence and humor (well, sometimes), and for being a first reader for so many drafts and half-baked ideas.
I DEDICATE this book to my siblings and my parents: this isn’t autobiography but you’re in every page, and a part of everything I do. To Mark and Chris, for adopting me so fully into your family. And a shout-out to family all around: sisters-in-law, cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, and a wonderful grandmother-in-law. And to Grandpa-dude: longtime light in all things.
TO NORA and Alice: I’m coming up from the shed soon. I love you this much.
TO LAUREN: I’ve been working on this book nearly as long as we’ve been married. For your patience, encouragement, insight, big-heartedness, wisdom, leadership, and love—for everything you make possible in this world, which for me is everything—I’m forever yours.
About the Author
PATRICK COLEMAN’S writing has appeared in Hobart, ZYZZYVA, Zócalo Public Square, the Black Warrior Review, and Utne Reader, among others. His debut poetry collection, Fire Season (Tupelo Press), won the Berkshire Prize. Coleman also edited and contributed to The Art of Music, an exhibition catalog on the relationship between visual arts and music (Yale University Press with the San Diego Museum of Art). He earned an MFA from Indiana University and a BA from the University of California, Irvine. He lives in Ramona, California, and is the assistant director of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination at the University of California, San Diego.
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Also by Patrick Coleman
Fire Season
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE CHURCHGOER. Copyright © 2019 by Patrick Coleman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Cover design by Joanne O’Neill
Cover photographs © Pararath Gouri Sanker/EyeEm/Getty Images (background); © solarseven/iStock/Getty Images (cross)
FIRST EDITION
Digital Edition JULY 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-286411-6
Version 06122019
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-286410-9 (pbk.)
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