"Charged with erotic energy and an almost mystical yearning, Jamie Quatro's debut novel, Fire Sermon (Grove Atlantic), is a tour de force exploration of lust, marriage, longing, and love. ... exploring the tensions that play out when heightened sexual desire, intellectual frisson, and having one's beliefs tested meet the quotidian routines and rewards of work, family, and faith. ... Incorporating a mix of narrative styles from epistolary to confessional to flashback, Fire Sermon is a virtuosic portrait of flesh-and-blood sensuality and the mystery of salvation." -Lisa Shea, ELLE
"Fire Sermon offers a radical, transformative vision of the intersection between faith and desire. It is a book that takes sin seriously-and compels readers to see how eternal concerns can make for great, and disturbing, fiction." -Nick Ripatrizone, Literary Hub
"Quatro is a true cartographer of desire, showing that the longings of the body and the soul aren't two autonomous states but constitute a singularly vast and singularly wild territory. Her fiction is sexy, it's theological, and it's consistently and surprisingly both at the same time." -Anthony Domestico, Commonweal
"With short chapters, each packing an emotional and linguistic punch, this book is intensely beautiful." -Ilana Masad, Book Riot
"Switching between erotically charged letters and just as inflamed vignettes (think Dept. of Speculation), this debut novel documents a wild affair. Maggie-wife, mother, and Christian-finds herself soul-searching, confessing, and downright reveling in her passion for a man who's not her husband. Don't get too close to the fire."-Estelle Tang, Elle, "19 of the Best Books to read this Winter"
"Quatro follows her dazzling 2013 short fiction collection with a debut novel that updates the familiar infidelity story. Vivid and intense, Fire Sermon can be read in a single afternoon, its velocity propelled by the extraordinary voice of its narrator. Quatro eschews a traditional, linear chronicle of marriage for a structure that more closely mirrors a questioning mind: a series of flashbacks juxtaposed with flashes forward; bits of dialogue, poetry, theology, and philosophy; and Maggie arguing with herself in a way that is intimate, raw, and psychologically fascinating."-National Book Review
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