Description

To the outside world, Reverend Nathaniel Whitfield and his family stand as godly pillars of their small-town community in Puritan New England. One disciple, Dr Arthur Lyman, discovers in the minister’s words a love so captivating it transcends language.

As the bond between the two men grows more and more passionate, their wives and children must contend with a tangled web of secrets, lies and judgments that threatens to destroy them in this world and the next.

Set during the turbulent historical upheavals that shaped America, All the World Beside reveals the very human lives just beneath the surface of dogmatic belief.

Publisher Review

A gorgeous, spellbinding work of historical fiction that conjures up a society wrestling with faith, love and a sense of belonging. It is a heartbreaking account of forbidden passions and lost innocence told with intimate, lyrical beauty. It is truly sublime. I loved it — Douglas Stuart Part spell, part prayer, wholly mesmerizing. Garrard Conley casts the same magic in fiction as in the memoir that made him famous — Torrey Peters, author of DETRANSITION BABY In this accomplishment of breathtaking prose, expert pacing and extraordinary psychological intelligence, Conley presents a world as it was, as it is, and as it could be. A triumph. — Tess Gunty, author of THE RABBIT HUTCH A soaring, beautiful novel, at once sweeping and deeply personal…Part restoration and part reclamation, Conley’s bold new American myth simply sings — Brandon Taylor, author of THE LATE AMERICANS Garrard Conley has found a new and ravishing music: a language that straddles the 18th and 21st centuries, a vehicle for faith and desire. In its closing movements, this novel contains some of the finest writing I’ve encountered in recent American fiction — Garth Greenwell, author of CLEANNESS Teaches us that in Puritan America the scarlet letter was not A for adultery but H for homosexuality and that the only romance with God is tense and tragic — Edmund White