IN THE WAKE OF GOD AND MAN

O’Gill’s character-driven debut novel charts a woman’s spiritual awakening.

Forty-nine-year-old Chasity lives with her boyfriend, Tom, in Minnesota. Tom is Chasity’s former college professor; he is 74. While the relationship has its challenges, Chasity much prefers Tom to her ex-husband, Scott, with whom she shares three children. When she and Tom call it quits, Chasity looks for love on a dating app. It is tough going, even if Chasity has the advantage of good looks. She eventually matches with a man named Matt, and their first date goes well. However, when Chasity goes to Europe to celebrate her 50th birthday, communication with Matt breaks down. It is the beginning of what Chasity comes to recognize as a dark night of the soul as she finds herself “spiraling, contemplating suicide, and breaking down more and more.” Perhaps Matt is her twin flame—why else would the loss of connection with him be so devastating? Whatever the cause of her despair, Chasity also starts to hear the voice of God and becomes re-baptized. Clearly her life is changing; the question is, what will those changes ultimately bring about? Chasity’s protracted personal journey plays out over nearly 700 pages of text, though her narrative is less than epic. Not much happens on Chasity’s trip to Europe, aside from moments like eating bad pizza in Amsterdam (Chasity and her friend find that the personal-sized pie “has barely any sauce and in America, they would be laughed at for even calling it pizza”). The pace picks up as Chasity delves deeper into her personal troubles, and O’Gill’s conversational prose keeps things moving: “Chasity reached out to Matt again; she had let three excruciating weeks go by, hoping he would reach out every morning and disappointed every night.”

A lengthy but largely engaging account of one woman’s crisis.