We found this book through Netgalley. Reading classics is something we love, so when we saw the famous Penguin Classics cover we automatically requested the book.

Once it was on our shelf, we took a closer look. We had never heard of this title, nor of Harry Crews and were instantly curious. Right from the start we were cautious. As it is a classic, there are themes and words in the text that wouldn’t be used today. Fair warning to anyone who wants to pick this one up for a read.

Here we follow a young man who is thought to have the singing voice of an angel. Because of this, people of all walks of life flock to him. Not only do they dote on his voice, they begin thinking of him as a higher power with gifts to heal the sick. The Gospel Singer – who remains unnamed – wants it all to stop. He knows he has a good voice. But he simply wants to use it to make money and pursue the pleasures of the skin. Does he speak up or does he put up with his followers in order to continue making money?

It is a quick read and a rather interesting one. From the go, it draws you in and you want to know more about the characters, how they got there and their outcomes. There are times where you laugh, cry and times where you just sit with your mouth agape at the absurdity of it all.

Yes, the topics are sensitive and the language can set people off, but knowing what you are walking into with this book helps. This book is beautifully written and its topics and moral codes are ones that are still debated to this day.

This has become one of our favorite reads of the year so far and we will keep our eyes peeled for more Harry Crews books in the future.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher Penguin Group Viking- Penguin Classics for an advanced copy of this classic work of Southern fiction.

A famous singer of gospel tunes returns to his hometown, to find a black man he grew up with in jail for murdering the town beauty, which won't save the accused from a lynch party. While the rest of the town is awaiting the miracles and healing power of the singer in this debut novel by the Southern writer Harry Crews, The Gospel Singer. A messy tale of hope, freaks, violence and believing so much in something that not even the truth will change it.

Enigma, Georgia is a town where the highway ends before going into the swamp. The Gospel Singer whose voice can change lives, whose face graced the cover of LIFE Magazine among others is returning home with all the hopes and dreams of an entire town on his shoulders. All want, or need something, a song to the blind, a song to the dead, a way out, from the Gospel Singer, who fears that his people will see that he is just a phony, a false idol. Add in a freak show, mob violence, and soon the reader knows something, something probably horrible is going to happen.

Harry Crews was known for his dirt road tales of small towns, smaller hopes and crushed dreams, always with a feeling that violence, was just around the next second, that terrible things could happen to characters, and that they might go on, but the reader knew they would never ever be the same. Many of the people in his stories seem like central casting in an oddities museum, but all are fleshed out, with a past you don't need to know, but you know that it probably wasn't great, and neither does their future, oh and right now is not so good either. But they all breathe an exist on these pages, and leave their marks on the reader. Not a good portrait of a people, but these are the people that Mr. Crews knew.

As a debut, it's great, knowing that even better books would be coming from Mr. Crews, though he has faded from the bookstores, something I am glad that Penguin Publishing is amending. The dialogue carries the story, the plot almost meandering until it gets to the its inevitable end. For readers of authors like Daniel Woodrell, Chris Offutt, James Dickey and Larry Brown.