Curious Calling of Leonard Bush

WINNER of the Willie Morris Award for Southern FictionYoung Leonard Bush buries his lost leg and saves his whole East Tennessee town in this winsome and miracle-making novel.When twelve-year-old Leonard Bush loses his leg in a freak accident, he decides to give his leg a proper burial in the hilltop cemetery of his East Tennessee town. This event somehow sets off a chain of miraculous and catastrophic eventsupending the lives of Leonards rigidly God-fearing mother, June; his deeply conflicted father, Emmett; and his best friend, Azalea, and her mother, Rose, who is also the town prostitute. While the local Baptist minister passes judgment on events and promises dire consequences, the people of this small community on the banks of Big Sugar move together toward awakening.Susan Gilmores love of storytelling flows naturally from her Tennessee roots. Shes the daughter of a revival preachers son, brought up on the land and streams that populate this novel that is, as Appalachian novelist Lee Smith says, a homespun Pilgrims Progress.