Introduction

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize

Judith and her father don't have much?their house is full of dusty relics, reminders of the mother she's never known. But Judith sees the world with the clear Eyes of Faith, and where others might see rubbish, Judith sees possibility. Bullied at school, she finds solace in making a model of the Promised Land?little people made from pipe cleaners, a sliver of moon, luminous stars, and a mirror sea?a world of wonder that Judith calls the Land of Decoration. Perhaps, she thinks, if she makes it snow indoors (using shaving cream and cotton balls and Scotch tape) there will be no school on Monday. Sure enough, when Judith opens her curtains the next day, the world beyond her window has turned white. She has performed her first miracle. And that's when her troubles begin.

With its intensely taut storytelling and gorgeous prose, The Land of Decoration is a breathtaking story of good and evil, belief and doubt. Grace McCleen is a blazing new talent in contemporary literature.

Editorial Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, April 2012: “In the beginning there was an empty room, a little bit of space, a little bit of light, a little bit of time.” Extraordinarily bright for her 10 years but isolated by her strange faith, Judith McPherson has always known she’s living in the End Times, anticipating a new life in “a land flowing with milk and honey.... the decoration of all lands.” Life with her widowed Father feels oppressively quiet, so out of candy wrappers and shoe laces and other cast-off stuff, she creates an intricate replica of her town in her room--one that lives by the rules of her internal logic--and makes the astonishing discovery that what she does in her bedroom’s Land of Decoration gives her miraculous abilities in this one. Egged on by the voice of God (or one more sinister), she expands her powers until real life teeters on a tenuous edge. A visceral and memorable depiction of an imaginative child trying to reconcile her idyllic interior life with a harsher world, Grace McCleen’s visionary debut grapples with essential questions: how to feel your way forward when faith blurs with madness, or grief cleaves a parent from their child, or our imagined sense of control cedes to life’s wondrous chaos. --Mari Malcolm

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