Hallelujah Side by Rhoda Huffey

Product Details

Synopsis

From the publisher of Homestead, winner of the 1999 PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Fiction, another terrific first novel, the funny and tender tale of a little girl’s struggle with her Pentecostal family’s joyful belief that Jesus will return any minute to take the Christians up to heaven.

“It had been a Second Coming sky all day, which meant they might be in heaven by this evening.” So begins the story of Roxanne Fish, daughter of Sister Zelda Fish and Pastor Winston Fish of the First Assembly of God Church of Ames, Iowa. The Fishes’ older daughter, Colleen, wants no part of their exuberant faith (“Where are you going, young lady?” “To find my real family!”), but Roxy longs to be saved even as she fears her sinful desires, such as marrying Elvis Presley when she grows up. If she grows up.

Roxy lives in a world populated by angels with blue noses and demons who follow her around whispering “God doesn’t like you.” And sinners, sinners everywhere, easily identifiable by their makeup and capri pants and knowledge of television programs: “As Christians you didn’t watch TV. Instead you played on the staircase, bumping down for hours on your rear end. Pastor Fish preached against TV as the one-eyed monster, but Brother Ransom needed it for crop news. Corn was going up and down like a yo-yo.You got it all on The Farmer’s Report. Then you turned it off, but sometimes Little Richard was too fast for you.” And then there is the problem of boredom in church: “Roxanne tried crossing her legs to get the Northern Lights between them. Staring straight ahead, she pressed. Her father went on about Habakkuk this and Habakkuk that. She stopped breathing. Then she gave up and uncrossed her legs. Leafing through the hymnal, she began adding “under the bed” to the titles. “Jesus, I Come, Under the Bed.” “What a Friend We Have in Jesus, Under the Bed.” “Rescue the Perishing, Under the Bed.” That was a hysterical one! She was just trying to read the tithing admonitions on the offering envelope in Pig Latin, sounding out each word, Ithway Anksgivingthay, when something smashed her in the left side of her cranium. ‘ROXANNE IS A FILTHY SINNER!’ said God.”

The Hallelujah Side is the unforgettable story of the conflict between Roxy’s desire to be saved and her yearning to experience the beauty and variety of the world. The conflict comes to a head when she discovers, with the help of Little Richard and a young Aretha Franklin, that she has a gorgeous, fabulous voice. And her voice as narrator is fabulous too, part Huck Finn, part Carson McCullers’ Scout, yet all her own in this wonderfully inventive novel.

Publishers Weekly

A funny, heartwarming novel about a strictly devout evangelical family may sound like an oxymoron, but in Huffey's beguiling debut, it proves the case. Narrator Roxanne Fish is nine years old when we meet her and her staunchly religious--but also affectionate and encouraging--parents. Roxy's father is pastor of a church in Ames, Iowa, whose members fervently believe that the Second Coming is imminent. Roxy is desperately afraid that she will fail to ascend to heaven with her parents because she has not yet been saved. Her older sister, Colleen, may not make heaven, either, because she's determined to become a Catholic. To their mother, cheerful, bubbly Sister Zelda, the Rapture will mean she'll have the davenport she craves. Kindly Pastor Fish is happy to punctuate his temporal existence playing baseball with Roxy. A beguiling mixture of typical preteen and fundamentalist believer, Roxy invents a demon named Fred, who taunts her about her doctrinal shortcomings, and a talking hedge that gives her advice. Guiltily, she allows her doll to indulge in all the sins a good Christian rejects. One temptation proves irresistible, however. The Fishes' beer-swilling neighbor lures Roxy into an Unpardonable Sin: singing rock and roll. Having thus discovered that she has a remarkable voice, Roxy now sees Satan everywhere. Her poignantly humorous thoughts and adventures, juxtaposed against the daily round of church services and domestic crises, make for a diverting narrative. Sometimes, however, the action leans toward sitcom: the sexual peccadilloes of three church leaders produce comic surprise, but the third incident of moral hypocrisy becomes overkill. The novel culminates in Roxy's first real religious experience; as an adolescent, she is discovered by Aretha Franklin, and as she sings "Rock My Soul" with Aretha's group, she experiences her own kind of transcendence. Huffey's light touch with her material, and her sensitive rendering of a religious youngster's matter-of-fact belief that the world may end any minute, move her story from the paradoxical to the plausible. (Nov.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Biography

The daughter of two Pentecostal preachers, Rhoda Huffey lives in Venice Beach, California. She is a magazine writer and a tap dancer who teaches adn performs extensively. She also holds an M.F.A. form the University of California at Irvine, and has been published in Ploughshares. The Hallelujah Side is her first novel.