High As the Horses’ Bridles

In his debut, Cheshire proves himself nimble with biblical language, integrating its cadence and mystery into his own prose to powerful effect. The book opens in 1980 in Queens, when Josiah Laudermilk, age 12, listens to his church’s reverend hollering from the pulpit about the “sinners’ blood” that will flow at Armageddon. The threat of apocalypse, more so than that of a wrathful God, is the true religion of Josiah’s upbringing. As a promising young preacher, he becomes so enamored of the thought of apocalypse that he abandons his more measured sermons for those presenting a vision of the end of days. Unfortunately, the thunder and lightning of the opening pages soon gives way, jumping ahead 25 years to find “Josie” divorced, depressed, and living in California. Though the novel often cuts back in time, the rest of Josiah’s life, and therefore the novel, remains in the middle distance, neither intimate in its unfolding, nor recounted with any interesting wisdom. Despite the promise of the framework, the prose soon becomes monotonous, with both the implausibly frequent catastrophes as well as the minutiae of Josiah’s day-to-day failing to ever ignite. (July)