The Curious Calling of Leonard Bush

by Susan Gregg Gilmore

Overview

Young Leonard Bush buries his lost leg and saves his whole East Tennessee town in this winsome and miracle-making 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 judgment 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.”

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781958888582
Publisher:	Blair
Publication date:	08/26/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

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 Tennessee with her husband.

Editorial Reviews

Each fully developed character has a role to play in this moving and unusual novel, a homespun Pilgrim's Progress set at a dairy farm on Big Sugar River in East Tennessee in 1961. When twelve-year-old Leonard Bush loses his leg in a freak accident, a chain of miraculous and catastrophic events is set in motion, inevitable as the dire judgment of the local Primitive Baptist Church. Leonard's rigid, God-fearing mother, June; his secret-bearing father, Emmett; Leonard's best friend, Azalea, and her troubled mother, Rose, the local whore, are only the protagonists in a story played out by the entire community. Gilmore knows how to move the suspenseful events right along to its brilliant and moving conclusion. A big, generous novel, a really good read.”—Lee Smith, The Last Girls and Silver Alert

“The Curious Calling of Leonard Bush is by turns sweet, deepest-dark, hilarious, poignant, grotesque, thrilling, and oh-so-human. It’s above all moving: the Southern spirit climbing mountains then tumbling down, then climbing once more, all with one leg. I’m from Maine, and couldn’t help thinking of Carolyn Chute’s The Beans of Egypt, Maine. But here is a book of the South, from a writer who knows the territory as William Faulkner knew his, with a cast of characters as eccentric and individual as those in As I Lay Dying, but all the more human here, more loving and loved. Susan Gregg Gilmore has a big enough heart to contain it all. I was sad to see it end, to wake to the real world, and so I’m settling in to read it again, right now, email and headlines and obligations be damned.”—Bill Roorbach, Life Among Giants, Lucky Turtle, and The Remedy for Love

“The Curious Calling of Leonard Bush is a call to readers to stop what they’re doing and read! Humorous, heartfelt, and sometimes harrowing, Susan Gregg Gilmore introduces us to a compelling cast of characters and a community built on a system of give-and-take. At the center of it all is young Leonard, his early loss a transforming lesson to everyone around him.”—Jill McCorkle, Old Crimes and Life After Life

From the Publisher