The release date for the English version of 'The Secret Lives of Church Ladies' by
Deesha Philyaw is Sep 2020. If you enjoy this novel, it is available for buy as a paperback from Barnes & Noble or Indigo, as an ebook on the Amazon Kindle store, or as an audiobook on Audible.
The raw and vulnerable spaces where Black women and girls dare to follow their passions and seek a little escape from being virtuous are explored in The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. The nine stories in this anthology depict persons from four generations struggling with their identity in the world while being torn between their personal needs and desires and the church's hypocrisies.
Jael, who is fourteen years old, has a thing for the preacher's wife. Lyra discovers, at forty-two, that her discomfiture with her physical appearance is preventing her from finding new love. Caroletta and her childhood best friend have a shaky arrangement of "same time next year" as Y2K approaches. The ground rules for her married partners are set by a serial mistress. In the shadowy darkness of a hospice parking lot, strangers going through grief find solace in one another.
These church ladies are as seductive as they want to be, as vulnerable as they need to be, as unfaithful and unrepentant as they care to be, and as free as they deserve to be, with their new love, forbidden affairs, and secret longings.