Liberté, Egalité, Sororité

It’s 1885. When murderous circumstances force two widows—Annie and Euphémie—and the precocious Auguste to flee their French village, a quartet of missionaries from the Church of Solemn stow them away within the Statue of Liberty’s head on a steamer that arrives in New York after a deadly tempest. From NY, the Solemnites usher the refugees to the staid village of Solemn, Indiana, where pleasure is forbidden.

The village embraces the refugees while at the same time avoiding certain delicate subjects, including the relationship between the two widows, as well as Auguste’s endless blasphemies.

These delicate subjects become unavoidable when Solemn is tapped to host the All-Tent Revival. The revival calls itself a “multi-denominational marketplace for God.” More accurate would be: “a time-bomb composed of two-hundred rival factions of late-19th-century American crack-pot religious sects.” Guess who sets off that bomb.

With its cast of obedient romantics, mystical nutbags, and adorable cynics, Sister Liberty is the rollicking, thunderous introductory volume to The Stables Family Chronicles.

Warning! This audiobook contains descriptions of: whistling, allegorical situations, lesbians, apostasy, and a pleasure wheel. Also: Eleven instances of the word fuck.