The Quickening

On a sweltering Tennessee night, the Holy Spirit descends on Little Zoar, and twelve-year-old Thomas Jefferson Gordon watches his world begin to change. Reverend Silas Crafts has come to Paradise Valley to preach the Quickening, that violent, sanctifying work of grace that transforms sinners into saints. But Thomas isn't certain he wants transformation. He's caught between his mother's uncompromising faith and the reckless freedom he finds with Scrap Pendry, a friend who's just come through his own altar-call and emerged, seemingly, remade. Lynde writes with quiet precision about that precarious moment when a child stands at the threshold between innocence and experience, when the questions feel too vast for his age while the answers never arrive fast enough. The revival meeting becomes a crucible where faith, community, and adolescent doubt collide in a small Southern town at the turn of the century. This is for readers who appreciate subtle, atmospheric coming-of-age stories that explore spiritual wrestling without easy resolutions.