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Overview
Preston Clearwater has been a criminal since stealing two chain saws and 1,600 pairs of aviator sunglasses from the army during the Second World War. Back on the road in postwar North Carolina, now a member of a car-theft ring, he picks up hitchhiking Henry Dampier, an innocent twenty-year-old Bible salesman. Clearwater immediately recognizes Henry as smart but gullible, just the associate he needs—one who will believe Clearwater is working undercover for the F.B.I.; one who will drive the cars Clearwater steals as Clearwater follows along in his own car at a safe distance. Henry joyfully sees a chance to lead a dual life as a Bible salesman and a G-man.During his hilarious and scary adventures, Henry grapples with doubts about the Bible's accuracy, and we learn of his fundamentalist upbringing, an upbringing that doesn't prepared him for his new life. As he falls in love with the captivating Marleen Green and questions his religious training, Henry begins to see he's being used—that he is on his own in a way he never imagined.
Synopsis
Preston Clearwater has been a criminal since stealing two chain saws and 1,600 pairs of aviator sunglasses from the army during the Second World War. Back on the road in postwar North Carolina, now a member of a car-theft ring, he picks up hitchhiking Henry Dampier, an innocent twenty-year-old Bible salesman. Clearwater immediately recognizes Henry as smart but gullible, just the associate he needs—one who will believe Clearwater is working undercover for the F.B.I.; one who will drive the cars Clearwater steals as Clearwater follows along in his own car at a safe distance. Henry joyfully sees a chance to lead a dual life as a Bible salesman and a G-man.
During his hilarious and scary adventures, Henry grapples with doubts about the Bible's accuracy, and we learn of his fundamentalist upbringing, an upbringing that doesn't prepared him for his new life. As he falls in love with the captivating Marleen Green and questions his religious training, Henry begins to see he's being used—that he is on his own in a way he never imagined.
The Washington Post - John McNally
Edgerton's novel is reminiscent not so much of Faulkner or Flannery O'Connor as of Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers, which is far more memorable for its character sketches than for its plot. In the same way, there are immense pleasures in the tales patched together in The Bible Salesman—tales that could have been spun on the front porch of a late summer North Carolina night.
Editorials
Associated Press Staff
Hilarious. . . The Bible Salesman combines the sweet and funny stories of growing up in the South with the humorous and frightening adventures of a life of crime.Booklist
The Bible Salesman skillfully employs all the devices its author has honed over the years-a fine ear for dialogue, a love for the South and its people, and a gently modulated wit-to produce another winner.Nashville Scene
Hilarious...beyond the violence and beyond the laugh-out-loud humor, this story of a boy who becomes a man is, in Edgerton's hands, a true tale of redemption. It's not a spoiler to say that, by novel's end, Henry is indeed saved, though not by any illusions fed to him in Sunday School.O Magazine
An escapist romp at heart, perfect for a lazy summer's afternoon.Raleigh Metro Magazine
As much as the crime story takes center stage here, it's in these extended flashbacks to Dampier's history that Edgerton shows some of his best writing: quick, nostalgic glimpses of a lost era, told mainly from a child's wide-eyed perspective-but infused with a master storyteller's understanding of the adult world as well.... Warm and winning.Richmond Times Dispatch
Irresistible...Edgerton is a master of comic timing, and The Bible Salesman is a font of wildly creative comedy.Southern Living
If you've ever read any of Clyde Edgerton's wonderful books, you know the characters rule supreme. The same remains true of his newest novel, The Bible Salesman... The character you'll remember most is a recently passed-away cat named Bunny.Star News Online (Wilmington)
Clyde Edgerton's funniest in years.The News & Observer
Achingly poignant and ripsnortingly funny... The Bible Salesman is so sweet and funny that its darker themes of death, abandonment, existential uncertainty and the impermanence of human relations sneak up quietly on the reader.The News & Observer (Raleigh)
Edgerton is a master of not only describing small-town life, but also of making the reader long for it...Edgerton has great affection for his characters, and while he makes us laugh at their eccentricities, he also provides his readers with enough substance and vulnerability to fall in love with them....one great joy ride.The Roanoke Times
Edgerton mines the orthodoxy of his youth in rural North Carolina to find humor in an awkward young man wrestling with the temptations.The Wall Street Journal
A breezy and sometimes humorous yarn.The Washington Post
There are immense pleasures in the tales patched together in The Bible Salesman - tales that could have been spun on the front porch of a late summer North Carolina night.Western North Carolina Magazine
The influences of Mark Twain and James Thurber color The Bible Salesman...With intoxicating Southern-fried humor that's both warm and biting, Edgerton's latest is a breezy crowd-pleaser that will certainly expand his already large and loyal readership.John Leland
[Edgerton's] out to tweak the righteous, not do battle with them. Religion, he suggests, is of a piece with the rest of humanity's foibles, no better, no worse. Sometimes it leads to stealing cars, other times to a sound sleep at night. Edgerton falters only when he leaves aside the comforting wink…But mostly the novel rides like the cars Clearwater steals, bouncing gently over the bumpy back roads.—The New York Times
John McNally
Edgerton's novel is reminiscent not so much of Faulkner or Flannery O'Connor as of Charles Dickens's The Pickwick Papers, which is far more memorable for its character sketches than for its plot. In the same way, there are immense pleasures in the tales patched together in The Bible Salesman—tales that could have been spun on the front porch of a late summer North Carolina night.—The Washington Post
Publishers Weekly
In this rollicking, rambling road novel of the post-WWII South, Preston Clearwater, a dead ringer for Clark Gable, steals cars and passes himself off as an undercover FBI agent. His mark is naïve 20-year-old Bible salesman Henry Dampier, whom Preston convinces to drive the cars to various paint shops (telling Henry that they have infiltrated a car-theft ring), while Preston follows in his own legally registered Chrysler. Preston undertakes more audacious forms of crime, while earnest Henry has a reunion with his fundamentalist family, listens to his cousin's scheme to market a new ad gimmick (called "the bumper sticker"), falls in love with roadside fruit-stand proprietor Marlene Greene and even manages to sell a few Bibles along the way. The hitch is his involvement with Preston: Henry will have to get wise to preserve all he has gained. Too many flashbacks to Henry's Baptist roots slow him down on the way to the novel's suspenseful climax and moving epilogue, but the result is one of the better takes on Southern Bible salesman buddy stories since Moses Pray and Addie Pray of Paper Moon. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Library Journal
Preston and Henry make an odd couple. Henry is an innocent, 20-year-old Bible salesman whom Preston picks up hitchhiking one day in postwar North Carolina. Preston has been looking for a new patsy to help him with his car theft ring. Of course he tells Henry that he is with the FBI and that they are out to catch the criminals behind the crimes. The earnest young Henry loves the idea of being a G-man and serving the Lord. As the two travel around the South, the reader learns not only about their escapades but also about Henry's upbringing, his first romance, and, finally, his questioning of the very religion that had him out on the road in the first place. In this comedic novel, Edgerton, the author of seven best sellers (e.g., Walking Across Egypt), gives us a satisfying twist on the coming-of-age tale. For all public libraries, especially where Edgerton has a faithful following. [See Prepub Alert, LJ4/15/08.]
—Robin Nesbitt