Susan Gregg Gilmore, The Curious Calling of Leonard Bush, in conversation with Heather Frese

Young Leonard Bush buries his lost leg and saves his whole East Tennessee town in this winsome and miraclemaking 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 events—upending the lives of Leonard’s 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 judgement on events and promises dire consequences, the people of this small community on the banks of Big Sugar move together toward awakening.

Susan Gilmore’s love of storytelling flows naturally from her Tennessee roots. She’s the daughter of a revival preacher’s son, brought up on the land and streams that populate this novel that is, as Appalachian novelist Lee Smith says, a “homespun Pilgrim’s Progress.”

Susan Gregg Gilmore is the author of the novels The Curious Calling of Leonard Bush, Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen, The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove, and The Funeral Dress.  She has written for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, the Los Angeles Times and the Christian Science Monitor. Born in Nashville, she lives in Chattanooga, Tennessee, with her husband.

Heather Frese’s debut novel, The Baddest Girl on the Planet, won the Lee Smith Novel Prize. Her second novel, The Saddest Girl on the Beach, is a companion novel to her first book. Coastal North Carolina is her longtime love and source of inspiration, her writing deeply influenced by the wild magic and history of the Outer Banks. She currently writes, edits, and teaches in Raleigh, North Carolina.