Electric God: A Novel
About this ebook
Hayden Reese has an unpredictable temper, especially when he sees harm done to the innocent or helpless. He has served time for assault. The rural California town he lives in is just as much a prison as any cell he occupied, full of people just trying to survive another day without getting on each other's nerves. When he's not working odd jobs or getting drunk, he's involved in a chaotic affair with a woman with a troubled teenage daughter and a jealous husband who's more than ready to meet Hayden on his own violent terms.
But Hayden wasn't always fueled by anger and bad decisions. He was once a husband and father—studying to become a doctor—before tragedy ripped his life and family apart, echoing a a devastating loss from his childhood that still haunts him. Wracked with guilt and seething with fury, Hayden's path of self-destruction comes to an abrupt end, leading him to discover that peace, redemption, and forgiveness await those with the courage to ask for it.
"Catherine Ryan Hyde is a magnificent storyteller. . . . Electric God is the answer to a prayer—a heroic, superbly crafted novel worth reading again and again and again." — The Denver Post
"A thought-provoking, original and honest novel. It is a novel of struggle, of small gains hard won." — San Jose Mercury News
"Gritty and full of surprises . . . openly inspirational but not cloying . . . with humor and a marked lack of sentimentality." — The Baltimore Sun
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About the author
Catherine Ryan Hyde is the bestselling author of more than fifty books. Her novel Pay It Forward was adapted into a major motion picture, chosen by the American Library Association (ALA) for its Best Books for Young Adults list, and translated into more than twenty-three languages for distribution in over thirty countries. Both Becoming Chloe and Jumpstart the World were included on the ALA's Rainbow Book List, and Jumpstart the World was a finalist for two Lambda Literary Awards. Where We Belong won two Rainbow Awards in 2013, and The Language of Hoofbeats won a Rainbow Award in 2015.
More than fifty of her short stories have been published in the Antioch Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, and many other journals; in the anthologies Santa Barbara Stories and California Shorts; and in the bestselling anthology Dog Is My Copilot. Her stories have been honored by the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest and the Tobias Wolff Award and have been nominated for The Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Award, and the Pushcart Prize. Three have been cited in the annual Best American Short Stories anthology.
