When 12-year-old Leonard Bush loses his leg in a freak accident, he decides to give it a proper burial in the hilltop cemetery of his East Tennessee town.
The act sets off a chain of miraculous and catastrophic events — upending the lives of Leonard’s God-fearing mother, June; his conflicted father, Emmett; his best friend, Azalea; and Azalea’s mother, Rose, the town prostitute.
While the local Baptist minister passes judgment and warns of dire consequences, the people of the community along Big Sugar River move toward a reckoning — and maybe a kind of grace.
That’s the premise of “The Curious Calling of Leonard Bush,” the fourth novel by Tennessee native Susan Gregg Gilmore, to be released Aug. 26. But the story behind the story begins years ago — with a tombstone.
NAME ON A TOMBSTONE