Faith, Family, and Forgiveness

FOR 12 YEARS, the Hortons have spent their summers on the revival circuit, driving hundreds of miles from one small city to another. Samuel Horton, a Black Baptist preacher famous for his healing, is proud of the souls he has won for the Lord and prouder of the power he wields. Still, he yearns for miracles no one would question, that would wipe away any doubt in his ability. If only he could heal his younger daughter, Hannah, who has cerebral palsy. If only his wife could give him another son, especially after their second son, Isaiah, was stillborn. In his pride, Samuel blames the women around him for his own limitations, even as he relies on them to hold together the picture of faith he has carefully constructed.

Behind the scenes of Samuel’s performance is 15-year-old Miriam Horton, the narrator of Monica West’s Revival Season. When the novel opens, Miriam is in awe of her father’s position and power, despite questioning the limited roles women hold in her community. As she helps raise Hannah and supports her mother, she memorizes her father’s prayers and sermons, carefully studying his process. She particularly envies her younger brother Caleb, who has the privilege of shadowing their father. Still, she prays that the scandal of the previous summer—when her father injured a pregnant girl he was meant to heal—does not follow them into the new season.

Everything changes when Miriam witnesses her father’s violence firsthand. Then, as her world unravels, Miriam discovers that she has the spiritual gift that has eluded her father, a gift that is a “sin” in a woman’s hands but a “blessing” in a man’s. As Samuel’s pride drives away his followers and his household tiptoes around the minefield of his rage, Miriam reflects on how her own faith in God once felt inextricable from her faith in her father: “He never said it outright—Believe in me as you believe in God—that would have been obvious blasphemy and idolatry. But he was the all-consuming presence that filled my entire life, taking up all the space in the house and in revival tents. In its absence was a black hole that seemed bigger than the presence that had inhabited it.”

Throughout her brilliant debut novel, West handles her protagonist’s growing awareness with grace and empathy. As Miriam’s eyes open to the realities around her, she must unlearn the problematic ideologies she’s inherited, especially when it comes to her mother’s mental illness and her sister’s disability. And despite the stifling world they live in, the women (and girls) of Revival Season are complicated and fully realized characters who care for one another while wrestling with the pain they subconsciously perpetuate. In this way, Revival Season is a necessary coming-of-age story that is as much about the mysteries of faith and family as it is about the complexities of forgiveness and resilience.