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Wycoff has proven herself a master of storytelling with this riveting, addictive tale. She writes with compassion and humor about characters so religious, it seems impossible that they haven’t been raptured out of here by now. You’ll find yourself rooting for them, all of them—wrong and wronged though they are. The most unexpected of love stories, this dazzling book will win you over fast and then splinter your soul.

     Deb Olin Unferth, author of Revolution and Vacation

 

Literature is historically rife with Catholic and Jewish characters who probe or question their faith and/or practices. Corrina Wycoff’s clean, spare, thoroughly engaging novel breaks ground in this tradition with fundamentalist Christians. Damascus House develops rich pathos for those who choose to cut ties as well as those who remain, while delicately maintaining a focus on the human drama, with neither an indictment nor endorsement of religion itself, except to observe how contemporary people use, abuse, rely on, form identity with, can be disillusioned or buoyed by a man-made institution.

     Cris Mazza, author of Something Wrong With Her and Various Men Who Knew Us as Girls

 

With the grace of a poet, the calm of an anthropologist, and the urgency of a refugee, Corrina Wycoff lays bare a culture that will be simultaneously shockingly foreign and hauntingly familiar to readers: American fundamentalism. This is an anti-romance, one family’s love story with a faith so painful and confusing the only salvation is to break apart everything. An unforgettable novel that will challenge your tolerance and your own capacity for understanding, and ultimately shore up your heart.

     Lydia Netzer, author of How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky and Shine, Shine, Shine

 

Without an ounce of sentiment or sanctimony, Wycoff probes the limits of faith, family and love in Damascus House. I was hooked from the very first line, as a community of believers is thrown into turmoil. Wycoff writes with authority, precision and a deep empathy that infuses even the most godless of foibles with humanity.

     Miriam Gershow, author of The Local News