Sheltering: Chelsea Bieker Found Joe Exotic Way Too Familiar
On this episode of Sheltering, Chelsea Bieker speaks with Maris Kreizman about her new novel, Godshot, the story of a young girl growing up in a Central Valley town in the midst of a terrible drought that has everyone vulnerable to the charms of a charismatic cult leader. Bieker talks about the desperation in the book that mirrors our current-day reality, having to hide books from her newly-reading five-year-old daughter, and how “in another life [she] could have written the Tiger King novel.” Bieker’s local bookstore is Powell’s; please purchase Godshot through their website or from Bookshop.
From the episode:
Maris Kreizman: One thing that really captured me about your book was how people make do when they are deprived of something. The preacher baptizes in soda because there’s no water; it’s sticky and gross, and that felt so visceral to me. And now people are making do in other ways—
Chelsea Bieker: Yeah, it’s so true, and I think the people of Peaches, for all of their faults… they are really intensely looking for some reprieve to the heinous situation they’re in, no matter how misguided that might be. And the mother’s actions are really out of desperation. I think that in the book everyone is really pushed to the brink, and they do these things to try and make it better but they actually make it worse. Hopefully that is not what is happening in our current world!
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Maris: Was there a question you were hoping to be asked on your book tour that I can ask you now?
Chelsea: One thing I’ve been thinking about a lot since the book has come out, has been thinking about my own childhood and my lack of sex education. I really don’t remember learning anything about pregnancy or even things about menstrual cycles, and in the book we really see Lacey grasping for an education about her own body and about all these things. She’s so hungry for the knowledge, and I think I was too, but didn’t know where to get it—there was so much messaging about abstinence, and even getting a period was a weird thing, where I was growing up—and how opposite of that I want to teach my daughter.
