Winner of The Believer Book Award for Nonfiction

"Meghan O'Gieblyn's deep and searching essays are written with a precise sort of skepticism and a slight ache in the heart. A first-rate and riveting collection."
--Lorrie Moore

"One of the most consistently absorbing collection of essays I've read in a long time. Meghan O'Gieblyn is at times rueful, at times hard-hitting, but hers is a distinctly independent-minded and nuanced voice." 
—Daphne Merkin 

"For insight into America's eschatological mind-set, and into fundamentalist culture generally, there may be no more eloquent guide than Meghan O'Gieblyn, who was raised in the faith and then -- painfully, reluctantly -- abandoned it... What she captures most vividly here is Christianity's indomitable reach... Thrillingly alive, her essays are testaments to exquisite attentiveness, each painstakingly stitched and emitting a pleasing, old-fashioned whiff of starch."
—The New York Times Book Review

"Comparing O’Gieblyn’s writing on the Midwest to Didion’s essays on California might seem too easy, but the comparison is apt. Both authors seem to be looking for a way out of their homeland, even as they admit they’ll probably never leave."
—Bookforum 

"O'Gieblyn has done an excellent job of pinning down [the Midwest's] character... [She has] a gift for seeing beyond the ideological veil to the other side of things... In a time when few voices are willing to engage with positions they disagree with, O’Gieblyn writes with refreshing sensitivity about subjects and institutions with which she often has foundational disagreements... A searching, powerful book, full of insight and generous critical inquiry.
—The Believer 

"An essayist of uncommon vision... [O'Gieblyn] displays a knack for noting the traces of the religious in the supposedly secular, as well as the inverse... An inquiry into the very heart of contemporary American life."
—Los Angeles Review of Books