Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival
    The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival
    The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival

    Written by Terry Roberts

    Narrated by Andrew Eiden

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    Jedidiah Robbins is a man on a crusade. From town to town, his Gospel train rides the rails of 1920s Appalachia, spreading the Good News with his daughter and a loyal group of roustabouts in tow. But Jedidiah's traveling revival company has a secret: in addition to offering the gifts of the Holy Spirit, it also delivers spirits of another kind. Prohibition is in full swing, but The Sword of the Lord train keeps the speakeasies in the towns it visits in business by providing the best that mountain stills have to offer. While beyond the gaze of federal agents, the operation eventually runs afoul of an overzealous small town sheriff and a corrupt judge, setting in motion a series of events that could land them all in chains. Told with haunting lyricism, this is the story of a preacher full of contradictions, a man for whom the way is never straight and narrow. It bends like the river, a river that leads him in the paths of a different brand of righteousness-and perhaps even to salvation.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHighbridge Company
    Release dateNov 20, 2018
    ISBN9781684418190
    Author

    Terry Roberts

    Terry Roberts is the author of three celebrated novels: A Short Time to Stay Here (winner of the Willie Morris Prize for Southern Fiction and the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction); That Bright Land (winner of the Thomas Wolfe Literary Award, the James Still Award for Writing About the Appalachian South and the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction); and most recently, The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival (a finalist for the 2019 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction). Roberts is a lifelong teacher and educational reformer as well as an award-winning novelist. He is a native of the mountains of Western North Carolina—born and bred. His ancestors include six generations of mountain farmers, as well as the bootleggers and preachers who appear in his novels. He was raised close by his grandmother, Belva Anderson Roberts, who was born in 1888 and passed down to him the magic of the past along with the grit and humor of mountain storytelling. Currently, Roberts is the Director of the National Paideia Center and lives in Asheville, North Carolina with his wife, Lynn.

    Related to The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival

    Related audiobooks

    Small Town & Rural For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      ‘I Hear The Screams’: 107-year-old Survivor Of 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Testifies To Congress In Call For Justice

      May 20, 2021

      Moments after falling asleep on 31 May, 1921, seven-year-old Viola Fletcher was awakened by her family and told to leave her home in the Greenwood neighbourhood of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Outside, a white mob drove thousands of Black residents from their ho

      3 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems by Phillip B. Williams

      Dec 15, 2017

      The masters are yet dead. Wanting to be human,I tried to rewrite The Waste Land. The canon’s reachcasts ruinous light. The masters’ pens breachthis page where, above, my own hand spectates. Babylonrisen, exorcism in reverse, whose nature upended now?

      6 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jan 1, 2024

      When the call cameshe ran. Outside, outthe back door, screamingNo No, got to thefence and ran back, droppedto her knees and pawedat the earth, clawingup handfuls of grass.She was howling. Aululation. Something I’d never heardbefore. Likea wild horse

      3 min read

    • Article

      Nick Laird

      Dec 15, 2017

      I was trying to write like an adult.I had children.I was at the end of something. As I waited at my table by the window for the coffee,I saw that the sirocco had depositeda scrim of dust on the sill overnight,and it was the dark red of powdered blood

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Epic Of Gilgamesh

      Jan 1, 2020

      My friends, who can reach heaven? The monster bellows like a river swollen with flood.Many are consumed in his fiery breath. My friends, who can reach heaven? Let us ask the mountain for a sign.Let us cut the spirits from the cedars. My friends, who

      3 min read

    • Article

      What The Magpie Says

      Oct 16, 2022

      What The Magpie Says
      8 min read

    • Article

      From Cantares Mexicanos

      Dec 1, 2023

      Last night I dreamt that I was employed as a suicide prevention specialist in ancient Mesoamerica. We had no phones then so no hotline to call or anything like that. I held these gatherings going place to place for people to tell me their stories and

      3 min read

    • Article

      Six Poems

      Nov 1, 2023

      loved best. Words I have neversaid. New sentence, at 80. Of coursenot more than his children, and their children. That goeswithout saying—but I want to lay down eachelement of love’s house. First,the hole, under—apple cellar, potato cellar,cellar to

      5 min read

    • Article

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary

      Jun 17, 2020

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary
      7 min read

    • Article

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary

      Jun 17, 2020

      Mrs Macarthur’s Secret Diary
      7 min read

    • Article

      Two Poems

      Nov 1, 2018

      In a hotel in a small town in Norfolk I am listening to someonethrowing glass bottles into a metal bin: toss-shatter, toss-shatter.There are no other sounds; it’s a quiet afternoonbut the one tossing them has a sense of rhythm and I havea sense that

      5 min read

    • Article

      My Mother Once Gave Up Her Savior: Featured Poetry by Tina Chang

      May 14, 2019

      A lovely, ambitious poem about the mysteries of belief that takes place in the murky and mystical place of faith. The post My Mother Once Gave Up Her Savior: Featured Poetry by Tina Chang appeared first on The Millions.

      2 min read

    • Article

      The Art Of Secretion

      May 5, 2022

      The Art Of Secretion
      8 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems by Rohan Chhetri

      Sep 8, 2020

      All summer the half voice lurked behind me & I played deaf for days for to live To not write about it to use my body Part the river’s flesh to operate Machinery is human too to love & for once stay awake through it all. Now it comes like the deer sle

      3 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Jul 1, 2019

      She grazes in a meadow, sulphur blossoms spillingfrom her jaw.At this moment she seems so calm, she could be holyif what that means is something like beingwholly unaware of the good she gives,how even her rooting tills the soiland even her shitting f

      2 min read

    • Article

      Must-Read Poetry: December 2020

      Dec 7, 2020

      Finish out the year strong with notable poetry books by Thulani Davis, James Matthew Wilson, Michael Longley, and Anne Marie Macari. The post Must-Read Poetry: December 2020 appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Dark Tales

      Dec 2, 2021

      Dark Tales
      6 min read

    • Article

      Equinox

      May 18, 2022

      In this strange world, where identities change with the rising and setting of the sun, supernatural forces are at work – and they’re causing trouble… St Leonars prison was an appropriately imposing building. It rose out of the surrounding shacks and

      5 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Jan 1, 2020

      Pallets of bottled water on the back porchwere one evidence of apocalypseor the demise of the way of thingsor lazily written computer code backin the 80s, when I was a boyand the nightly news was just about all the doomwe had stomachs for, whenwere t

      3 min read

    • Article

      Joanna Klink

      Mar 3, 2020

      Far into fever, attached by cords to the soft-clicking machines, he sleepsin a bed in a room not his own.People enter and pass like ghost-blownfogs. He is a slow walkwith limbs that recently gave way.He is part of the blue snowfall.He is very small,

      1 min read

    • Article

      Three Poems

      Mar 1, 2020

      All the animals you knowwill die. You set foodout for them anyway,let the oily seeds fallamong the fiddleheadsto be ground downpermanent as bone.The forest fills and unfills,drops itself down roottubes and turns to dark lace.One undoing: leafto sparr

      1 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Sep 1, 2021

      You don’t understand, he says, again,from the backseat of the car, my son, who only months ago, could not fallasleep before whispering, first, some secret in my ear. When I lookin the rearview, he turns toward peaks in the distance, and when I ask hi

      2 min read

    • Article

      The White Fox

      Oct 13, 2017

      The White Fox
      10 min read

    • Article

      Meditations On Ghosts

      Nov 1, 2022

      I believed, once, in Ouija boards, of standing in front of my own reflection mouthing Bloody _____, Bloody _____, Bloody _____ —& how still I hesitate because I know words transfigure tongues as easily as brain, transfigure to spells cast without my

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Holy Ghost Speakeasy and Revival

    4/5

    6 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      The American South in the 1920's was an interesting region. With religious folk preaching against the sins of drinking alcohol, and prohibition making it a prominent job option for those looking to make some money, here comes Jedidiah Robbins on his gospel train. With his team selling bibles, (and bottles out the back), he is a man full of contradiction. He is what made this book so compulsively readable.

      Jed and his group tour mostly in Appalachia and find themselves in trouble there from time to time. With local lawman trying to keep law and order, with the KKK, (unhappy with the colorful nature of Jed's team), and the additional appearance of H.L. Mencken trying to unveil a scam, it seems there is never a dull moment.

      I myself am not a religious type and I usually do not appreciate novels that attempt to preach at me, however stealthily that attempt may be. I do think some of that was going on here. It was my fascination with Jed Robbins that kept me going. I admit there were a few other characters that interested me as well-oddly enough-one of them was God himself.

      I think if Jed were a through and through man of the cloth this book would have been boring. But Jed was a man of the world, and even if it wasn't he himself that was distributing that bootleg liquor, it was his team doing so, and it was with his full knowledge. They did some other things that many would deem ungodly as well. Yet somehow Jed walked the walk of a true believer and he was sometimes so sweet and kind, he brought a tear to my eye.

      A quick note about the writing-Terry Roberts has a deft hand with language and that's another reason this book was so difficult to put down. I have several highlighted passages that I thought were just beautiful, but I can't quote them here until the book is released. (August 21, 2018, people! Mark your calendars!) A few times I just had to marvel over sentences that flowed like a mountain stream through my mind and emptied into the river of my heart. I may not be a religious person, but I am a spiritual person and the language here touched my spirit.

      THE HOLY GHOST SPEAKEASY AND REVIVAL is worthy of your time. Even if you're not religious, even if historical fiction isn't your true thing, (I'm not and it isn't, but the title sucked me in), this is a wonderfully written book that will lead you down through the paths of Appalachia into an America that is long gone, but fondly remembered here.

      Highly recommended!

      *Thanks to Edelweiss and Turner Publishing for the e-ARC of this book in exchange for my honest feedback. This is it.*