Holy F*ck

9781916725256
Bitter Lemon Press
Joseph Incardona, translated by Sam Taylor
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Stella works miracles. Literally. She heals the sick and the paralysed, just like in the Bible. The Vatican is overjoyed – imagine, a real saint in the 21st century, and in Georgia, the heart of the American South.

The only hitch? Her method: she heals the people she sleeps with in her motorhome. And she sleeps with a lot of people, it's what she does for a living. And that's precisely what's bothering the Vatican. For Luis Molina of the Savannah News, this story smells like a Pulitzer for sure. For the Vatican, it smells more like trouble. A saintly hooker isn't exactly presentable. A martyred saint, on the other hand, has a conveniently rewritten past. That's a job tailor-made for the Bronski twins – the best contract killers in the business.

Provided, of course, they manage to get their hands on innocent little Stella. America is a big place. Joseph Incardona sets his new story in a dusty, wacky United States. He excels in its film noir atmosphere: travelling funfairs on the outskirts of small towns forgotten by everyone, lost motels, freaks and the disenfranchised. It's reminiscent of the Coen brothers, Tarantino and del Toro, but also a homage to the novels of Harry Crews.