The Book of Susan

Winner of the Award of Merit of the 2023 Christianity Today Book Awards Fiction!

Profound and compulsively readable. Silas House, author of Southernmost

New from a fresh voice in literary fiction comes this riveting deep-dive into one woman’s experience with bipolar disorder and God.

Her mind has never failed heruntil an ill-fated dinner party.

Meet Dr. Susan Huffman: wife to chancery court judge Samuel Ellison, mother to adorable Ian, and college professor on track for tenure. Shes a woman who has always lived by her mind, and begins each day with a plan and a purpose. But then new-in-town Lorraine Davis accepts an invitation to Susan and Samuels home, and Susan begins to see mysterious visions. Are they symptoms of mental illness or warnings from God? And if so, how can she protect her circle of friends, her family, and her life as she knows it?

In this urgent and emotionally raw novel, a mother and professor journeys through revelations and betrayals to recover and thrive against tough odds.

The Book of Susan is the spare and sympathetic recounting of a journeyfrom derailment, to diagnosis, to the discovery of a lifetime.

Melanie K. Hutsell