Why Beulah Shot Her Pistol Inside the Baptist Church - Hardcover

Clayton Sullivan is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Comparative Religion at the University of Southern Mississippi. Now a full-time writer, he lives in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. His other works include Called to Preach, Condemned to Survive: The Education of Clayton Sullivan (1985); Jesus and the Sweet Pilgrim Baptist Church: A Fable (1992); and recently, Rescuing Jesus from the Christians (2002). This is his first novel.

"If you grew up in the environment of New Jerusalem and unrestrained, fundamentalist religion, this is deja vu. If you didn't, Clayton Sullivan will take you there. Be prepared to hurt and laugh, marvel,censure, and say Amen. But hold on all the way." ―civil rights veteran and author of Brother to a Dragonfly
"Clayton Sullivan has written a novel that is at turns rollicking and heart-rending, the story of sixteen year old Beulah Buchanan’s fateful marriage to thirty-six year old widower Ralph Rainey, a man of many parts, a man who is a “lollipop” in public and a “rattlesnake” in the privacy of his own home. This marriage starts and more or less ends in the New Jerusalem Primitive Baptist Church in New Jerusalem, Mississippi, population not enough, and over the course of its six year span, told in retrospect, draws a startling raw and touching portrait of small town life in the rural south. Sullivan has a deft touch with traditional Southern dialect, an eye for complex intimacies, and plenty of old-fashioned heart." ―Frederick Barthelme, professor, University of Southern Mississippi