Deesha Philyaw knows the church ladies — she made her name telling their secret lives. Her 2020 debut collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, won the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Story Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. On September 29, she went bigger: The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman, her debut novel, arrived from Mariner Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, and Kirkus gave it a starred review as “a rollicking satire of Black megachurch culture featuring an irresistible fireball of a protagonist.”

That protagonist is Scharisse Freeman, first lady of a 25,000-member Georgia megachurch, who ditched her humble roots to marry a pastor fifteen years her senior. Too brash and too “of the world” for the church folks, too holy for her estranged childhood best friend, Schar has built a business empire of books, clothing and branded products on the comfortable life her husband’s power affords. On the eve of her fortieth birthday she lands the validation she has always wanted: an invitation to the First Lady USA pageant, competing against pastors’ wives she describes as “like Jesus’ disciples if they had been a group of mean girls.” Then a scandal breaks with Schar at its center, and the past she buried comes roaring back.

Philyaw told Kirkus the novel is “about family, friendship, and belonging. It’s also about losing shame, embracing truth, and getting free — and what that all costs.” The story weaves from the AIDS crisis of the 1980s to the Obama era, examining sexual agency and the Black church with what the publisher calls unflinching humor. Writing a novel, after years of short fiction, meant worldbuilding on a new scale: a timeline spanning three years, with backstory reaching back decades.

Philyaw — a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow, a Baldwin for the Arts Fellow and a United States Artists Fellow who co-hosts the Ursa Short Fiction and Reckoning podcasts — is also developing television based on her short fiction. With First Lady Freeman, pictured here at a bookstore event holding the novel, she has given the church ladies a full-length stage, and Scharisse Freeman uses every inch of it.

More from We Speak Media

Erin Napier Brings Holiday Heart Home in ‘The Christmas House’E. Lockhart Dives Into Dark Waters With ‘The Pools’benny blanco Flips Failure Into Fuel in ‘F*ck Failure’Michael Douglas Looks Back in ‘One Helluva Ride’Sophia Chang, the First Asian Woman in Hip-Hop, Claims Her Title With ‘The Baddest Bitch in the Room’ PodcastBehavioral Scientist Dr. Zelana Montminy Asks Why We Don’t Do What We Know Is Good for Us in New LA Times Studios PodcastDani Shapiro’s ‘Family Secrets’ Joins Lemonada Media as the Hit Storytelling Podcast ReturnsFrom Podcast to Primetime: ‘Nick Cannon @ Night’ Makes the Leap to BET