I Could Name God in Twelve Ways

"McElmurray teaches us how to reckon and ravel, how to unpack secrets, abandon maps, and learn from everything, even vertigo, even a global pandemic. This book is for everyone who has ever felt vulnerable in this world, which is to say, everyone."—Julie Marie Wade, author of Otherwise: Essays and Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing

"'What does it mean to come from the center of a labyrinth and find one's way out?' is a question these essays ask and answer with exquisite urgency. For McElmurray, writing is both a compass and an act of faith, and what a compass she wields, what faith, to lead us out of her labyrinths with a rare blend of fearlessness and vulnerability."—James Tate Hill, author of Blind Man's Bluff: A Memoir

"A psychedelic dreamworld metaphysical journey and spellbinding story of a life."—Cat Pleska, author of Riding on Comets: A Memoir

"Lyrical and radically fearless stories about suffering and revelations of beauty. You'll be spellbound in the current of a masterful storyteller."—Annie Woodford, author of Where You Come from Is Gone: Poems

"The essays in this stunning collection are elegiac, urgent, vulnerable—full of loss and longing. Although the narrative is rooted in Kentucky, the scope is global as the narrator travels literally and metaphorically toward love and away from the ghosts of the past."—Sue William Silverman, author of Acetylene Torch Songs: Writing True Stories to Ignite the Soul

"A great pleasure to read. These lyrical essays explore what it means to leave a place where one has deep familial roots and to travel far and wide, geographically and culturally, without ever escaping the pull of home and its mysteries, richness, and sadness."—Zoe Zolbrod, author of The Telling: A Memoir