A bighearted dystopian novel about the corrosive effects of fear and the redemptive power of love.
At the end of the twenty-first century—in a transformed America—the families of convicted felons are tested for a set of genetic markers. Boys who test positive become compulsory wards of the state—removed from their homes and raised on "Goodhouse" campuses, where they learn to reform their darkest thoughts and impulses. Goodhouse is a feral place—part prison, part boarding school—and now a radical religious group, the Holy Redeemer’s Church of Purity, is intent on destroying each campus and purifying every child with fire.
We see all this through the eyes of James, a transfer student who watched as the radicals set fire to his old Goodhouse and everyone he’d ever known. In addition to adjusting to a new campus with new rules, James now has to contend with Bethany, a brilliant, medically fragile girl who wants to save him, and her father, the school's sinister director of medical studies. Soon, however, James realizes that the biggest threat might already be there, inside the fortified walls of Goodhouse itself.
Partly based on the true story of the nineteenth-century Preston School of Industry and the boys who lived and died in its halls, Goodhouse explores questions of identity and free will—and what it means to test the limits of human endurance.
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“Like Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Goodhouse is a gripping excursion to a vividly imagined and profoundly disturbing future. Peyton Marshall has written an unforgettable first novel, a work of striking originality, empathy, and skill.”
— Jennifer Haigh, New York Times bestselling author of Faith
“Peyton Marshall’s Goodhouse is a marvel—a glorious combination of page-turning literary thriller and challenging examination of freedom, destiny, and the thorny ideals of faith and science.”
— Eleanor Brown, New York Times bestselling author of The Weird Sisters“Goodhouse is a smart, literate thriller set in a foreseeable future where genetic profiling is meant to prevent crime but becomes—instead—a terrifying tool for oppression, discrimination, and violence. It’s a ripping good read.”
— Katherine Dunn, New York Times bestselling author of Geek Love“Marshall’s novel moves well, and the adolescent James is convincingly off-balance throughout. The result is a genre-bending thriller with a literary voice.”
— Publishers WeeklyBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Peyton Marshall is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the recipient of a Maytag Fellowship and the Richard Yates Award for short fiction. Her story “Bunnymoon” was published in Best New American Voices 2004. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Tin House, A Public Space, Blackbird, Etiqueta Negra, and FiveChapters. She lives in Portland, Oregon. Goodhouse is her first novel.
Will Damron has won several Earphones Awards and been a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award for best narration. He has had acting roles off-Broadway and on stage and screen throughout the country.