Lay Your Body Down

A People magazine must-read of summer!

"Suiter Clarke paints a devastating portrait of a cultlike institution and a town in its thrall. It’s even worse than we imagined." — New York Times Book Review

A young woman returns to her rural Minnesota hometown, where a radical evangelical pastor has poisoned everyone’s minds—and may be covering up a murder.

After Del Walker fled her small hometown and its cult-like church, she vowed to never return. The man she loved, Lars, left her to marry the local golden girl Eve, and their romance is now the focus of Eve’s viral blog espousing the pastor’s conservative philosophy about women and marriage. But six years later, Lars is suddenly killed, and she’s convinced it couldn’t have been an accident.

When Del returns to her hometown for the funeral, she discovers the now mega-church—and the insidious, patriarchal teachings of Pastor Rick Franklin—has grown not only in size but in influence. Eve was clearly discontent in her marriage, despite the carefully constructed “Noble Wife” positivity of her blog posts, and Del knows better than anyone just how far she will go to get what she wants. Del is determined to cut through the church’s lies and corruption to find out who killed Lars—even if it means confronting the religious trauma she’s spent years trying to bury.

"There are midnight-snack-style thrillers, and those that stick with you. This ones the latter." —People magazine