[QCrit] SANCTIFIED, Literary Fiction/Family Drama, 85K, first attempt
Hi all, I am a longtime lurker of this sub looking for feedback on this query letter. I appreciate any and all comments! Thanks!
Dear AGENT,
I’m seeking representation for SANCTIFIED, an 85,000-word literary family drama novel that traces the fractured evolution of a Haitian-American family as they cope with the death of their patriarch. It combines the sweeping intergenerational storytelling of Min Jin Lee’s PACHINKO and the poignant condemnations of religious institutions explored in Addie E. Citchen’s DOMINION.
On a late summer night in 2014, Enoch Dorsainvil, a charismatic Haitian pastor, drops dead in his Brooklyn apartment, leaving behind a trail of regrets. Namely, regrets on how he’s raised his three adult children, who drove him crazy when he was alive. There’s Patrick, the eldest, who everyone thought would become a pastor like his father, but is now an unemployed, middle-aged alcoholic atheist; Forgotten middle child, Ronald, whose dreary personality and emasculating marriage is the source of his quiet rebellion; Vanessa, the American born, and the only one to follow in her father’s footsteps, is too sanctimonious and keen to receive her father’s blessing to succeed him.
In the aftermath of his death, Vanessa’s glee at taking over the church is brief when she realizes she’s inherited a church in deep debt and a congregation that hates her. As she struggles to keep the church afloat, Patrick returns to the church and his estranged family to assuage the guilt he feels for his terrible last moments with his father. Ronald’s frequent romantic affairs end in blackmail and the possible dissolution of his marriage. And in Vanessa’s quest to gain respect from her congregation, she becomes further entrenched in a religious delusion that she may be a god.
Told in alternating chapters that weave between Enoch’s beginnings in 1930s Haiti to his migration to 1960s New York City, SANCTIFIED explores the pitfalls of the American Dream, the allure of power, and the fragility of religion.
BIO