When news breaks from Sister Evangeline’s central-Alabama hometown that some of her former associates have gone on a bizarre campaign of murder and mayhem, the Mother Superior’s already low opinion of her star-crossed young novitiate is cemented: there is no saving her. Cast out, Evangeline resumes her former identity (Maria Espinosa), and eventually — against her better judgment — she returns home. As her former schoolmates are prosecuted for their puzzling crimes, and as she reconnects with her “Most Likely to Succeed” high school sweetheart whose vast promise has gone mostly unfulfilled, Maria finds herself — almost despite herself — helping everyone around her pick up the pieces of what they thought they were. (To enter the Kingdom, click here.)
TJ Beitelman is the author of several books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, most recently This Is the Story of His Life, a linked sequence of prose poems published by Black Lawrence Press. His work has appeared in DIAGRAM, Quarterly West, Verse Daily, and Bellevue Literary Review, among other venues, and it has garnered him fellowships from the Alabama State Council on the Arts and the Cultural Alliance of Greater Birmingham. He has lived in central Alabama for more than twenty years and currently directs the Creative Writing program at the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham. (For a self-interview describing the genesis of Kingdom Come in more detail, click here.)