Shield the Joyous

Chad Holley is a dear friend of mine, but I wouldn’t say this if it weren’t true: his new novel Shield the Joyous is a beautiful and moving book. It’s most obviously a book about boyhood — boyhood in the American Deep South at a certain moment in history, yes, but more accurately boyhood — and yet I find it even more meaningful as a meditation on memory, memory as in some ways a burden, in other ways a comfort, and always a kind of gift to those remembered. 

There are other things I could say, but the story has a unique mood and tone, one to dwell in and with, and I think it’s best simply to ask readers to pay this world a visit. It will amply repay your investment of time and attention, and it will remain with you long after you set the book down.