The Secret Lives of Church Ladies

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'Left me wanting more. Masterfully written' - Candice Carty-Williams, author of Queenie

'Joyous... It's a book in love with life' - The Times


'Exquisite... delicious' - Bolu Babalola, author of Love in Colour


The Secret Lives of Church Ladies explores the raw and tender places where Black women and girls dare to follow their desires, and pursue a momentary reprieve from being good.


There is fourteen-year-old Jael, who nurses a crush on the preacher's wife; the mother who bakes a sublime peach cobbler every Monday for her date with the married Pastor; and Eula and Caroletta, single childhood friends who seek solace in each other's arms every New Year's Eve.


With their secret longings, new love, and forbidden affairs, these church ladies are as seductive as they want to be, as vulnerable as they need to be, as unfaithful and unrepentant as they care to be - and as free as they deserve to be.

Reviews

'Tender, truthful... joyous... full of flawed, bruised, bold, complex, intensely human characters' - Sarah Waters

'It's terrific. I'm savouring every story in it, reading them once, then again.' - Madeline Miller

'Joyous... It's a book in love with life' - The Times

'Left me wanting more. Masterfully written. Deesha Philyaw knows the craft of writing as well as she does the nuances of sex' - Candice Carty-Williams

'Joyful, riotous... Philyaw's great triumph is to permit her characters to inhabit fully their rich and particular interior lives' - Alex Preston

Author Bio

Deesha Philyaw is an American author, columnist and public speaker. Her debut, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, won the 2021 Pen/Faulkner Award, the 2020/2021 Story Prize, and the 2020 LA Times Book Prize for First Fiction and was shortlisted for the National Book Award. It is currently being adapted for television by HBO Max. Deesha is also a Kimbilo Fiction Fellow and will be the 2022-2023 John and Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi.