Eli Harpo's Adventure to the Afterlife
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A01=Eric Schlich
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Author_Eric Schlich
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baptist
Category1=Fiction
Category=FA
Category=FBA
Category=FS
christian
christianity
COP=United States
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doubt
eq_bestseller
eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_nobargain
evangelist
faith
florida
funny
growing up
humorous
Language_English
literary
on the road
PA=Available
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
sexuality
softlaunch
teen boys
teenagers
televangelist
theme parks
Product details
- ISBN 9781419769122
- Weight: 253g
- Dimensions: 229 x 152mm
- Publication Date: 15 Feb 2024
- Publisher: Abrams
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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Award-winning author Eric Schlich’s Eli Harpo’s Adventure to the Afterlife isan accessible and big-hearted novel that explores belief and forgiveness as a boy grapples with his faith and sexuality on a rollicking family road trip to Bible World.
When Eli Harpo was four, he underwent emergency open-heart surgery, flatlined on the operating table, and for a brief time, went to heaven and met Jesus. Or at least that’s what his father, a loving but devout Baptist minister, has raised him to believe.
Nine years later, Eli isn’t so sure. His rounds with his father to evangelize at hospices and sell his father’s self-published book, Heaven or Bust!, feel inauthentic and strange, especially now that he’s started having sex dreams about Jesus. Between that and his mother’s terminal breast cancer diagnosis, Eli feels further from heaven than ever. But when the famous televangelist Charlie Gideon shows up at the Harpos’ doorstep with a proposal to create a new attraction based on Eli’s trip to the afterlife at his Bible-themed park, Eli isn’t able to say no.
As the Harpos head off on a rollicking road trip from Kentucky to Bible World in Orlando, Eli is left to grapple with not just his faith and his sexuality, but also his own parents’ messy humanity and what happens when a family held together by mythmaking starts coming apart at the seams.
Hilarious and moving, Eli Harpo’s Adventure to the Afterlife is a kind-hearted story about self-discovery and the search for truth, wherever it takes you.
When Eli Harpo was four, he underwent emergency open-heart surgery, flatlined on the operating table, and for a brief time, went to heaven and met Jesus. Or at least that’s what his father, a loving but devout Baptist minister, has raised him to believe.
Nine years later, Eli isn’t so sure. His rounds with his father to evangelize at hospices and sell his father’s self-published book, Heaven or Bust!, feel inauthentic and strange, especially now that he’s started having sex dreams about Jesus. Between that and his mother’s terminal breast cancer diagnosis, Eli feels further from heaven than ever. But when the famous televangelist Charlie Gideon shows up at the Harpos’ doorstep with a proposal to create a new attraction based on Eli’s trip to the afterlife at his Bible-themed park, Eli isn’t able to say no.
As the Harpos head off on a rollicking road trip from Kentucky to Bible World in Orlando, Eli is left to grapple with not just his faith and his sexuality, but also his own parents’ messy humanity and what happens when a family held together by mythmaking starts coming apart at the seams.
Hilarious and moving, Eli Harpo’s Adventure to the Afterlife is a kind-hearted story about self-discovery and the search for truth, wherever it takes you.
Eric Schlich is the author of the story collection Quantum Convention, which received the 2018 Katherine Anne Porter Prize and the 2020 GLCA New Writers Award in Fiction. His work has appeared in numerous publications and has been selected for prizes by writers including Roxane Gay, Helen Oyeyemi, and Justin Torres. He holds a PhD in fiction from Florida State University and an MFA from Bowling Green State University. He lives in Tennessee, where he is an assistant professor at the University of Memphis.
