Cana, Massachusetts, 1730. To the outside world, Reverend Nathaniel Whitfield and his family stand as godly pillars of their small-town community, drawing Christians from across the New World into their fold. One such Christian, physician Arthur Lyman, discovers in the minister's words a love so captivating it transcends language.
As the bond between these two men grows more and more passionate, their families must contend with a tangled web of secrets, lies and judgments which threaten to destroy them in this world and the next. As Nathaniel and Arthur search for a path out of an impossible situation, their wives and children must do the same, looking beyond the known world for a new kind of wilderness, both physical and spiritual.
Set during the turbulent historical upheavals which shaped America's destiny, All the World Beside reveals the very human lives just beneath the surface of dogmatic belief. Bestselling author Garrard Conley has created a page-turning, vividly imagined historical tale that is both a love story and a crucible.
About the Author
Garrard Conley is the New York Times bestselling author of the memoir Boy Erased, as well as the creator and co-producer of the podcast UnErased: The History of Conversion Therapy in America. His work has been published by the New York Times, Oxford American, Time and Virginia Quarterly Review, among others. Conley is a graduate of Brooklyn College's MFA program, where he was a Truman Capote Fellow specializing in fiction. He is an assistant professor of creative writing at Kennesaw State University.
Industry Reviews
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
