Spider in a Tree

By Susan Stinson

2013

First Published

3.82

Average Rating

300

Number of Pages

9H09M

Audio Length

"Stinson reads the natural world as well as Scripture, searching for meaning. But instead of the portents of an angry god, what she finds there is something numinous, complicated, and radiantly human."—Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home "Through an ardent faith in the written word Susan Stinson is a novelist who translates a mundane world into the most poetic of possibilities."—Alice Sebold, author of The Lovely Bones "Wonderfully fuses the historic and the imaginative."—Kenneth Minkema, executive director, Jonathan Edwards Center Jonathan Edwards is considered America's most brilliant theologian. He was also a slave owner. This is the story of the years he spent preaching in eighteenth century Northampton, Massachusetts. In his famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," Edwards compared a person dangling a spider over a hearth to God holding a sinner over the fires of hell. Here, spiders and insects preach back. No voice drowns out all Leah, a young West African woman enslaved in the Edwards household; Edwards' young cousins Joseph and Elisha, whose father kills himself in fear for his soul; and Sarah, Edwards' wife, who is visited by ecstasy. Ordinary grace, human failings, and extraordinary convictions combine in unexpected ways to animate this New England tale. Susan Stinson is the author of three novels and a collection of poetry and lyric essays and was awarded the Lambda Literary Foundation's Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize. Writer in Residence at Forbes Library in Northampton, Massachusetts, she is also an editor and writing coach.

Avg Rating

3.82

Number of Ratings

100

5 STARS

31%

4 STARS

33%

3 STARS

25%

2 STARS

1 STARS

goodreads

Author

Susan Stinson

Author · 5 books

Susan Stinson's novels are Venus of Chalk (2004), Fat Girl Dances with Rocks(1994) and Martha Moody(1995). Spider In A Tree is her novel in progress. Belly Songs, a collection of poetry and lyric essays, was published in 1993. Her work—which has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Seneca Review, Curve, Lambda Book Report and The Women's Review of Books—has received the Benjamin Franklin Award in Fiction as well as a number of fellowships. She was born in Texas, raised in Colorado, and now lives in Northampton, MA. Susan has given workshops and been a featured speaker at Dartmouth College, Amherst College, Wheaton College, Hampshire College, University of Massachusetts, and Smith College, as well as conferences such as the National Women's Studies Association, Nolose, NAAFA, OutWrite, and Saints and Sinners Literary Festival. Honors Grants and fellowships from the Vogelstein Foundation, Millay Colony, Blue Mountain Center, Money for Women/Barbara Deming Fund, The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation and others. Venus of Chalk was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist.