Ten-year-old Judith McPherson is a believer. Her world is carefully constructed around her faith: nightly scripture reading with her father, weekly gatherings at the Meeting Hall and daily proselytizing to the lost. With no TV and no books “of the world” to entertain her, she passes time by creating The Land of Decoration, a model in miniature of The Promised Land which she has made of collected discarded scraps—divine treasures that she squirrels away.

But Judith’s troubles are mounting. At school, Neil Lewis’s relentless terrorizing has reached a feverish, dangerous pitch and, in town, a strike threatens the factory where her father works. One Sunday night, terrified of the violence that awaits her in the halls on Monday, Judith conjures a snowstorm in The Land of Decoration made of shaving cream, cotton and cellophane. The next morning the ground outside her window is a crisp, dazzling white. Judith can perform miracles. In fact, she might just be God’s chosen instrument. But with power comes weighty consequences, and Judith must face them head on to keep her faith—and her family—alive.

With its intensely taut storytelling and gorgeous prose, The Land of Decoration is a harrowing story of good and evil, belonging and isolation, faith and doubt, and it introduces us to a classic new heroine. It’s a novel that gives us many incredible gifts, but its most exciting is the gift of Grace McCleen, a brilliant, heartbreaking new voice in fiction.

GRACE MCCLEEN studied English Literature at Oxford University and The University of York before becoming a full-time writer and musician. She lives in London. The Land Of Decoration is her first novel.

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"This extraordinary tale of one little girl's End Times grabbed me by the throat.The Land of Decoration is part social observation and part crazy mysticism, held together by a brutally real story of parent-child love."

—Emma Donoghue, author of Room

?McCleen adroitly combines cinematic momentum with intuitive description in this novel about the consequences of faith and what happens when we believe that we have the power to effectuate change.? — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"While end-of-time stories are faddish, UK writer Grace McCleen's novel, The Land of Decoration (Henry Holt), is one to heed. The first sentence sets the tone for this rapturous, daringly imaginative tale of love, loss, and salvation." - From ELLE's April Issue

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