A Bitch for God

A Bitch for God, written by Clark T. Carlton, is a fast-paced fiction novel alive with quick-witted banter between vividly depicted characters that will imprint their multifaceted experiences into the readers’ memory banks via tales of immense sorrow, deathly loneliness, and stories of overcoming challenges. In tandem with philosophical concepts and questioning, the integral beliefs of Christianity and Hinduism are interconnected throughout the storyline.

The novel chronicled the life of Tyler, a young man who identified as a homosexual in Los Angeles, working toward his dream of becoming an actor with a litany of issues in tow, ranging from financial struggles to processing grief from losing a multitude of friends during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.

During Tyler’s adventures in Los Angeles, he required employment; this resulted in working as a chef at Manna from Heaven, a non-profit organization that delivered meals to those diagnosed with AIDS. The charismatic Lakshmi Steinmetz owned and operated the non-profit and presented many cult leaders’ parallels via her personality and mental characteristics. Lakshmi taught her followers with an odd amalgam of religious and spiritual trends into one disjointed medley of half-supported belief systems tangled within her narcissistically troubled mind.

Instability followed Lakshmi and manifested in her organization as zero funds to stock the kitchen or pay bills on time, and the workers had little pay and heavy responsibilities to care for some of society’s poorest and most vulnerable, the terminally ill.

Although this is a fictional story, the characteristics of Lakshmi’s cultic behaviors are rooted in psychological disorders that define a typical cultic leader’s behavior and how these dangerous individuals draw followers broken from addictions, socioeconomic problems, disease, family problems, and mental health issues.

Additionally, the storyline exposed the dark side of non-profits and the poor treatment of many who invest their lives into seemingly caring organizations with a hidden clandestine agenda. Also, Tyler poked fun and logic to many of the new-age belief systems that were popular during the late 1980s and early 1990s with scrutiny and a sardonic flare.

Indeed, Author Carlton crafted a witty novel that will allow readers a view into LGBTQ history and the tumultuous suffering that occurred to millions during the AIDS crisis, blended with fictional characters, dry hilarity, and quick-witted humor dark paired sarcastic quips and questions that humanity has been pondering for millennia will undoubtedly keep the readers entertained.