About this item

A figure with no discernible identity appears in a small, religious town, throwing its inhabitants into a frenzyIn a small unnamed town in the American South, a church congregation arrives to a service and finds a figure asleep on a pew. The person is genderless, racially ambiguous, and refuses to speak. One family takes the strange visitor in and nicknames them Pew. As the town spends the week preparing for a mysterious Forgiveness Festival, Pew is shuttled from one household to the next. The earnest and seemingly well-meaning townspeople see conflicting identities in Pew, and many confess their fears and secrets to them in one-sided conversations. Pew listens and observes while experiencing brief flashes of past lives or clues about their origins. As days pass, the void around Pew's presence begins to unnerve the community, whose generosity erodes into menace and suspicion.



About the Author

Catherine Lacey

Catherine Lacey is the author of three novels-- Nobody Is Ever Missing, The Answers, and Pew. She has published fiction in The New Yorker, Harper's, Playboy, and in her collection Certain American States. The recipient of a Whiting Award and a Guggenheim fellowship, she was also named one of Granta Magazine's Best of Young American Novelists in 2017. Born in Mississippi, she is now based in Chicago.



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