There have been two times in my life where I was reading a book and it made me cry. The first was Bridge to Terabithia in fourth grade. My friend Sarah put her hand on my back and said, “Hey Amber, are you ok?” and I shook my head.

“This book has made me so sad!” I sniffed and held it up for her to see.

“Oh, yeah,” she said, “that one is a bummer.”

The second is Ken Wheaton’s first novel, The First Annual Grand Prairie Rabbit Festival. I cried, because by the time something sad happened to someone in the book, I was so emotionally invested in the characters that I felt sad, too! The people in this book are vibrant and well-crafted; they are folks we care about, root for, dislike, laugh at, and love. It is a novel for those of us who appreciate character-driven stories.

The setting is a fictitious version of Grand Prairie, Louisiana, and Father Steve Sibille is the protagonist. He’s a nerdy 30 year old priest with a whole slew of bewildering women in his life, ranging in age from flirty teenage alter girls to a spicy, whiskey drinking “one hundred something” year old African American woman that helped raise him and just can’t stop sticking her nose in his business. “You need a woman!” she tells him often, waving her wrinkled hands at his vow of celibacy.

When a rival Baptist preacher shows up threatening to bring an even bigger, badder church to the town, Father Steve starts scheming up an event that he hopes will keep his flock in the fold: the first annual Grand Prairie rabbit festival. The planning is a little shaky – and that Baptist preacher isn’t going to make things easy on Father Steve and his crew – but this motley cast of characters comes together, and help arrives from unexpected, and hilarious, places.

There’s an elephant, a few trips to the gay bar, and a lot of drinking, too.

On Amazon here.
Listen to my interview with Ken here.