The Living god by Sam Heaps is a temporal wake of trauma that refuses to relocate.
Release date: Oct. 1, 2025 | SARKA Publishing
Told over 24 hours outside Whitehall, Montana, The Living god follows “baby,” the young lover of aging prophetess Elaina, and Jesse, the father of Elaina’s toddler messiah, as they struggle together in exile after a catastrophe in their religious community. When baby miscarries Jesse’s child, their futures are thrown into turmoil, forcing the couple to face the violent desires that have motivated their lives. Its core question—How can a community be something other than a unit of exclusion?—isboth call and echo.
While thematically linked to Women Talking by Miriam Toews, and stylistically reminiscent of Christine Schutt's Nightwork, its story and voice are completely its own. In prose as astonishing and anguishing as it is intricately beautiful, Heaps makes us question the limits of faith—in a higher power and in each other—and forces us to reckon with the cruelty and violence inherent in desire.
The Living god embodies what literature must do if it is meant to change us—ask us to reframe our relationship to ourselves, the world, and the broken belief systems that no longer serve us.
“The Living god has the quality of a voice from the grave, or a story told through a spirit board. It features a small set of characters—the leader, the seeker, and the lost—whose lives interlock, forming a specifically American picture of spiritual richness and destitution. In crisp, often sumptuous prose, Sam Heaps moves us through 24 hours in the life of ‘baby,’ a lost soul navigating several intense relationships from the margins. The Living god establishes Heaps as a serious writer, and SARKA as a press to watch for releases in the future.”
—Ben Fama, author of If I Close My Eyes and judge of SARKA’s 2025 Novel Prize
“The Living god is a beautifully brutal story about loss—of faith, love, and family—but it’s also a novel about the very nature of storytelling, and the ways language itself fails us. Sam Heaps is a stunning, tremendous talent, and this book is propulsive, gut-wrenching, tender, and wise.”
—Kimberly King Parsons, author of We Were the Universe