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    High as the Horses' Bridles
    High as the Horses' Bridles
    High as the Horses' Bridles
    Audiobook10 hours

    High as the Horses' Bridles

    Written by Scott Cheshire

    Narrated by Adam Grupper

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Josiah is a child preacher, called to speak to an amphitheater of thousands in 1980s New York. In a style reminiscent of DeLillo, Cheshire takes us inside their apocalypse-obsessed world, setting the tone for events to come. Fast forward several years, and Josiah (or Josie) has broken with the community that bound him, only to have the new life he built collapse. When his ex-wife Sarah calls to say his father sounds strange--even unhinged--Josie must return home. Back in Queens, the old sights and sounds of the neighborhood and the memories-- of his childhood friend Issy, his first love, the mother he has yet to mourn-- overcome him. When he arrives at his father' s door, he' s completely unprepared for what he finds. How far back must one man journey to heal a sacred bond between father and son? In a surprising twist, we learn that it may be further than even Josie himself. In rhapsodic language steeped in the tradition of evangelism, Scott Cheshire has created a novel that is remarkable in scale and energized by the power and danger of belief. High as the Horses' Bridles is the debut of an extraordinary new talent.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJul 8, 2014
    ISBN9781490618821
    High as the Horses' Bridles
    Author

    Scott Cheshire

    Scott Cheshire earned his MFA from Hunter College. He is the interview editor at the Tottenville Review and teaches writing at the Sackett Street Writers' Workshop. His work has been published in Slice, AGNI, Guernica and the Picador anthology The Book of Men. He lives in New York City.

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    Reviews for High as the Horses' Bridles

    3.5/5

    24 ratings8 reviews

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    • 4/5
      "And God's army will come riding forth on horses, and the sinners' blood will run in the streets, thick and deep, high as a horse's bridle ..."

      Much enjoyed this -- recommend it highly. Cheshire's brief interlude with the closing chapter, "No Moe Dominion," was a pleasant surprise and probably "made" the book for me, as it was the best-written section of the book, IMO, and brings the whole story full circle.
    • 3/5
      I just didn't get this book, kept waiting for something profound to happen. I really would have liked to know more about Issy.
    • 2/5
      I don't know. Maybe I'm the only one, but I didn't really love the book. I didn't struggle to get through it or anything, but I didn't feel caught up in the story, and I just didn't get the point. Maybe it suffered from following The Time of Our Singing in my reading. It would be hard for any book to follow that one. I liked Josie as a character, but I felt like there was so little resolution. I still want to know more about Issy. I could've spent more time with Amad.I was hopeful during the prologue--it did start with a bang. But I felt like the end just sort of petered out. Like maybe there should've been more to the story but the author was under deadline or something. I didn't hate it. It just didn't do much for me. Looks like the other reviewers enjoyed it much more than I did. Maybe you should check out their reviews to see what i didn't get.
    • 3/5
      Philipp Meyer called this book Dostoyevskian. It is not. Even without that in my mind as I read, this novel is underwhelming.
    • 5/5
      Scott Cheshire writes with such an incredible touch about the relationship between a father and son, Christian evangelism, and endings. High as the Horses' Bridles is a not unkind look at people who live for the end. It is not satire. People are treated humanely and respectfully, particularly Josie's father whose life and subsequent final days are beautifully and heartbreakingly portrayed. The reunion between father and son could have been so many things that it was not. It's about the final letting go of a marriage that's failed and a childhood friendship that ended abruptly. And a book about endings "ends" appropriately at the beginning. I loved this book. It was so many things I didn't expect and more. A book I would recommend and reread.
    • 5/5
      This is a remarkable novel about the impact of a cult like church on a young man throughout his life. Later when the man comes home to care for his ailing father, the memories and emotions that came with the church all seem real to him again. This novel jumps between the 80s, present day and a tent revival in 19th century Kentucky. The writing and honest voice in this one is just top notch. I loved the book and cannot wait for the authors next work.
    • 2/5
      The story begins with a bang and then quickly fizzles. A young boy preaches to a huge audience about the coming of the end of the world, and then the story cuts to the present and the disillusion of the now grown man. Josiah Laudermilk enters the story as a boy wonder, but returns home to care for his father as both men grapple with loss of faith. I lost my way in the story and never found the correct door to enjoy the book. I had difficulty with reading this novel, as many sentences made no sense. I constantly reread paragraphs, and still found the meaning obtuse
    • 5/5
      I received this Advance Reader Copy from the Early Reviewers program at LibraryThing. I have no idea (well, okay, I have some) about why I was so captivated by this book. The writer intersperses some pretty philosophical statements into the fictional story, something that can sometimes annoy me. But every time, they so closely resembled my own philosophies that it all rang true. This book is about a boy raised in a fundamentalist cult-like church, he himself being a prophesier from a young age. He's coming home now to care for his aging dad after decades of non-religious life, although he has never lost his deeply spiritual way of looking at life and things. Lots of things for me to relate to here, and this book spoke to me deeply, but was also just a really good story, and commentary on how our faith growing up affects how we deal with life. If this topic interests you, you should put this book on your to-read list.