Did Not Finish

'Its magnetism and effortless backflips reminded me a lot of Raven Leilani's Luster, like reading a painting. She's an incredible talent' Julia Raeside, author of Don't Make Me Laugh 'Shannon's debut is a tremendous display of talent. Contemporary in its composition and fearless to experiment, the book elegantly makes bold thematic suggestions which avoid heavy-handedness' Gonzalo Ceron Garcia, author of We Are The End A woman in her mid-twenties moves back home to live with her parents, where her listlessness fuels an obsession with cleaning, and sets in motion a series of events that lead to her posing as a model in a nude gallery where she encounters a woman whose life will intertwine with her own. 'An utterly unflinching debut novel about becoming a rare and profound book about loneliness, self-expression and disillusionment, featuring sex, love, drugs – and cleaning' Ian Sansom

Beth Allison Barr has lived with assumptions about what she should do and who she should be. In Becoming the Pastor's Wife, Barr draws on her 25 years of experience as a pastor's wife and her scholarship as a historian to trace the role of the pastor's wife, showing how it both helped and hurt women in conservative Protestant traditions. While they gained an important leadership role, it came at a deep cost: losing independent church leadership opportunities and strengthening a gender hierarchy that prioritized male careers. Barr examines the connection between the decline of female ordination and the rise of the role of pastor's wife in the evangelical church, tracing its patterns in the larger history of Christian women's leadership. By expertly blending historical and personal narrative, she equips pastors' wives to better advocate for themselves while helping the church understand the origins of the role as well as the historical reality of ordained women.