Content Notes: Scorched Grace
PERTINENT CATEGORIES
Adult Fiction / Crime Fiction / Hardboiled-Inspired Mystery Fiction / Amateur Sleuth Novel / LGBTQ Crime Fiction / LGBTQ Mystery / Neo-Noir Signatures
PAGE COUNT
310 pages
EDITORIAL CORRECTION
In Scorched Grace (HC 1st edition), the word insulin should be glucagon (pp 232-234); under becomes over (p 292). We apologize & corrected the text for Ebook/paperback editions/reprints. Thank you!
CONTENT ADVISORY
Scorched Grace is a crime fiction novel about stubborn hope, justice reimagined, and queer resilience. It is also a punk tribute to the sacredness of life and the need for connections, however flimsy or fraught. Scorched Grace is the first book in the Sister Holiday Mystery Series Quartet. The full series includes Scorched Grace, Blessed Water, Divine Ruin, and Ravaged Light.
Please be advised that the following Content Advisory contains spoilers!
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Content ADVISORY: Scorched grace
This crime fiction book includes a mention of hate crimes; mentions of sexual abuse of two teenagers; suicide; addictions; the death of an older animal after a long and happy life (it is not graphic nor an intentional death, but it is mentioned); scenes inside a jail; corporal punishment; cancer; verbalized and internalized homophobia; sexism; racism; past harassment; past incest; and a toxic relationship. Although these are relatively short and succinctly crafted for narrative and narratological aims within hardboiled crime fiction, if these content warnings are notable for you, please take that into consideration.
There is a graphic description of a leg injury and there are lyrical descriptions of three deceased people.
Religion, fire, arson, burning, and church windows are leitmotifs and featured heavily. There are two erotic/sexual scenes.
Rationale
I believe content notes can help readers make informed decisions about which books are for them, and how to approach them.
I also believe in the vital relationship between reader and text. Inspired by the scholarship of Dallas J. Baker and Michel Foucault’s aesthetics of existence, I concur that “queer readings of literary texts can also be part of an ethics of the self or queer self-making” (D. J. Baker).
Though crime fiction and noir are genres that commonly include violent subject matter, I never treat it lightly. I believe in responsible, empathetic representation to build dimensional characters and narrative scenarios. I respect art that holds space for inquiry and dichotomous tensions. Writers and scholars like Aristotle, Octavia E. Butler, and Julia Kristeva have articulated the personal and cultural value found in dramatic tragedy and narratives of the abject. I am motivated to write hardboiled mysteries to feature contoured queer characters and storylines in spaces where we have been historically erased. Paradigmatic shifts and catharsis, when earned, can be transformational and reparative. In fact, I view crime fiction as uniquely artful and empowering space in which we can intentionally engage with vocabularies and taxonomies to talk about traumatic experiences, causality, and resiliency.
Scorched Grace bears witness to institutional oppression, and it itemizes the high costs of patriarchal, white supremacist, and heteronormative violence against vulnerable communities. Writing a character who is unapologetically gay and a devout nun represents my belief in queer futurity. This book honors the continuum of queer people in spiritual and religious spaces.