From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Having made his reputation with literary SF and fantasy set in the jungles of Central America (The Jaguar Hunter), Shepard embarked on a second phase in his career, exploring the back roads of America (Two Trains Running). Mixing the tropes of fantasy and noir fiction, Shepard has cobbled together a beguiling tale. Wardlin Stuart, spinning his wheels as a bartender just off of Puget Sound, gets into a drunken brawl that ends in death for his attacker. Convicted of manslaughter and imprisoned, he concocts something called "prayerstyle" as a way to survive institutional violence. To Wardin's surprise, prayerstyle works; it even brings him the love of his life. Word gets out, and other inmates ask him to create and chant prayers for them. Wardlin puts together a book of prayers, and A Handbook of American Prayer is published, resulting in parole, unwanted fame and hundreds of pleas from across the country for help. Wondering if the religion he inadvertently created is a blessing or a curse, Wardlin tries to lay low with his lady love in Arizona. But his growing popularity results in a violent encounter with a fundamentalist Christian preacher from Phoenix. And just as he's planning to give up prayerstyle, Wardlin discovers that his fictitious god may be real. This well-paced meditation on the nature of faith and our national obsession with the cult of celebrity finds Shepard at the height of his powers: poetic and pugnacious; metaphysical, yet down and dirty as a back-alley brawl. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
Not since Laurie Foos' hilarious send-up of the contemporary American media obsession with unlikely celebrity, Ex Utero (1995), has there been such dead-on fictional scrutiny of what is news. And in this case, what news: the crossing over from pop best-sellerdom to religion to cultish sociopsychology of the titular volume, a collection of pragmatic prayer-poems for specific things but to no particular god save "the God of Loneliness" that murderer Wardlin Stuart develops while in stir. Fortunately, Stuart is paroled in time to pitch the book; not, however, before a prison chaplain marries him in jail to a woman he met via "prayer-speak." It's a pop-lit publicist's dream, and Shepard's arresting tale of a cult celebrity in spite of himself has an elegiac, dreamlike quality. Though filled with introspection, it is punctuated by the kind of sinister edginess and violence that only underlay Ex Utero as it shows an admittedly shallow and indifferent murderer become the focus of sociological, political, and religious pundits, and a cult hero. Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
A man walks into a bar. A dispute ensues, and the bartender kills him. He's sentenced to ten years for manslaughter. In prison, the convict, Wardlin Stuart, writes prayers addressed to no god in particular. Inexplicably, his prayers - whether it's a request for a girlfriend or a special favor for a fellow inmate - are answered, be it in days or weeks. When his collection of supplications, A Handbook of American Prayer, is published by a New York press, Stuart emerges a celebrity author. Settling into a new life in Arizona, he encounters a fundamentalist minister. The two are destined for a confrontation. In the interim, it seems that the god to whom Stuart has been praying has manifested himself on the earth. In this short novel about America's conflicting love triangle - celebrity, spirituality, and money - Shepard negotiates the thin line between the real and the surreal, expounding upon violence and redemption along the way. This story of an unlikely American messiah shows why The Wall Street Journal has compared Shepard, an award-winning author, to Graham Greene, Robert Stone, and Ward Just.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
While serving a ten-year sentence for manslaughter, Wardlin Stuart contemplates his mortality by writing prose poetry in the form of prayers, a methodology involving focus and intensity he calls prayerstyle. His philosophy is profoundly simple: "￯﾿ﾽwhatever name one attached to a prayer, be it Allah or Jesus or Damballa, was less important than the intensity and particularity with which one prayed￯﾿ﾽ Thus prayer, perhaps even faith, might be seen as an immoderate act of physics, a functional means of effecting small changes in reality."

When his spiritual entreaties miraculously come to fruition, other inmates begin asking him to write prayers for them -- all of which eventually come to fruition. By the time he is released, Stuart is a published author and, in the eyes of millions, the next messiah. His image is on the cover of Time and Newsweek, and he is featured on 60 Minutes and Larry King Live. But with all the sudden fame and fortune -- and all its trappings -- Stuart begins to doubt the legitimacy of prayerstyle. Is he really a modern-day shaman or just another con man?

Science fiction and fantasy fans who have marveled at Lucius Shepard's boundless imagination in previous novels (Valentine, Louisiana Breakdown, Viator, et al.) will be absolutely blown away by A Handbook of American Prayer. Like Kim Stanley Robinson's The Years of Rice and Salt and Heaven by Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, the message behind this brilliantly surreal meditation on spirituality will stay with readers for a long, long time. Paul Goat Allen

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Wardlin Stuart is an American messiah, a man who seems to have a direct line to God - but if he does, it's a divinity unlike any you may have prayed to." "Stuart's story begins when he kills a man in a bar. He is sentenced to ten years for manslaughter. In prison, he composes prose poems, prayers addressed to no recognizable god. He intends to produce only small benefits, not miracles. But what he asks for happens, whether it's a girlfriend for himself or special privileges for fellow prisoners. Soon Wardlin is regarded as a local shaman, and he emerges from prison a national celebrity." "Stardom pushes Wardlin into conflict with a fundamentalist minister. The two are destined for a showdown. In the meantime, it seems as if the god to whom Stuart prays has come into being, and is walking the earth." In this novel about America's conflicting love triangle - celebrity, spirituality, and money - Shepard negotiates the thin line between the real and the surreal, expounding upon violence and redemption along the way.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Having made his reputation with literary SF and fantasy set in the jungles of Central America (The Jaguar Hunter), Shepard embarked on a second phase in his career, exploring the back roads of America (Two Trains Running). Mixing the tropes of fantasy and noir fiction, Shepard has cobbled together a beguiling tale. Wardlin Stuart, spinning his wheels as a bartender just off of Puget Sound, gets into a drunken brawl that ends in death for his attacker. Convicted of manslaughter and imprisoned, he concocts something called "prayerstyle" as a way to survive institutional violence. To Wardin's surprise, prayerstyle works; it even brings him the love of his life. Word gets out, and other inmates ask him to create and chant prayers for them. Wardlin puts together a book of prayers, and A Handbook of American Prayer is published, resulting in parole, unwanted fame and hundreds of pleas from across the country for help. Wondering if the religion he inadvertently created is a blessing or a curse, Wardlin tries to lay low with his lady love in Arizona. But his growing popularity results in a violent encounter with a fundamentalist Christian preacher from Phoenix. And just as he's planning to give up prayerstyle, Wardlin discovers that his fictitious god may be real. This well-paced meditation on the nature of faith and our national obsession with the cult of celebrity finds Shepard at the height of his powers: poetic and pugnacious; metaphysical, yet down and dirty as a back-alley brawl. Agent, Ralph Vicinanza. (Nov. 15) FYI: A genre novel by Shepard-Viator (Forecasts, Oct. 18)-is being published simultaneously by Night Shade Books. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

While serving ten years for murder in the state penitentiary, ex-bartender Wardlin Stuart perfects a new, nonreligious method of prayer that actually works. The basic idea is that the process of composing a prayer helps to focus the mind. People get what they pray for once they know what they want, as Wardlin himself demonstrates by winning parole, finding a new girlfriend, and landing a fabulous book deal in short order. He goes on the talk-show circuit and becomes the reluctant guru of a rapidly expanding self-help cult. Christian fundamentalists denounce the "Wardlinites" as godless, and a violent confrontation seems inevitable. At first glance, Shepard appears to have penned just another Stephen King knockoff, but this ingenious and exciting break from his fantasy novels (e.g., Liar's House) is really closer to Michael Crichton: prayer as a promising new technology that quickly gets out of hand. Like Crichton, Shepard focuses on the message throughout, pushing the narrative forward without extraneous characters or wasteful digressions. This novel deserves a place on the shelf next to such classics as Robert Coover's The Origin of the Brunists (1967).-Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews