Publication Date: June 27, 2023
A young woman returns to her rural Minnesota hometown, where a radical evangelical pastor has poisoned everyone’s minds—and may be covering up a murder.
After Del Walker fled her small hometown and its cult-like church, she vowed to never return. The man she loved, Lars, left her to marry the local golden girl Eve, and their romance is now the focus of Eve’s viral blog espousing the pastor’s conservative philosophy about women and marriage. But six years later, Lars is suddenly killed, and she’s convinced it couldn’t have been an accident.
When Del returns to her hometown for the funeral, she discovers the now mega-church—and the insidious, patriarchal teachings of Pastor Rick Franklin—has grown not only in size but in influence. Eve was clearly discontent in her marriage, despite the carefully constructed “Noble Wife” positivity of her blog posts, and Del knows better than anyone just how far she will go to get what she wants. Del is determined to cut through the church’s lies and corruption to find out who killed Lars—even if it means confronting the religious trauma she’s spent years trying to bury.
Del Walker vowed she’d never return to her hometown and the ultra-conservative church that left her feeling like an outcast. However, she didn’t count on her ex-boyfriend dying in a hunting accident.
Author Amy Suiter Clarke turns up the suspense in Lay Your Body Down. Walker’s return forces her to confront the past while exploring the possibility that Lars was actually murdered.
Between diary entries from Walker’s past, along with blog posts from her friend Eve touting the virtues of being a noble wife, readers get a sense of why Walker walked away from the cult-like mentality.
All the ingredients for a twisty thriller are present, including a smooth-talking pastor who has managed to take the congregation to mega-church status, a widow with secrets, and a voicemail Walker received from Lars just days before his death.
It’s a storyline that will make your skin crawl as you turn the pages, trying to fit the pieces together. I spent quite a while trying to categorize the characters based on their motives.
Lay Your Body Down tells the story of a woman who must set aside her past religious trauma in order to unlock the answers she seeks.
AMY SUITER CLARKE is the author of Girl, 11 and is a writer and communications specialist. Originally from a small town in Minnesota, she completed an undergraduate degree in theater in the Twin Cities. She then moved to London and earned an MFA in creative writing with publishing at Kingston University. She currently works for a university library in Melbourne, Australia.
