Hallelujah Anyway: Growing Up Queer in the Bible Belt

"I didn't leave the church. The church left me."In the heart of the Bible Belt, where faith is currency and silence is survival, Hope Wilder grew up learning that holiness had conditions. You could love God-or you could love yourself. You just couldn't do both.Hallelujah Anyway is a raw, poetic memoir about growing up queer in the South-where pews feel like prison benches, family dinners turn into confessionals, and salvation sometimes looks a lot like survival. With equal parts tenderness and rebellion, Hope unravels her complicated relationship with faith, family, and belonging-one hymn, one heartbreak, and one hard-earned hallelujah at a time.From Sunday morning sermons to late-night reckonings under Kentucky stars, this book is for anyone who's ever been told they were "too much" to be holy. It's for the ones who learned to make peace with heaven after walking through hell. And it's for every queer soul still sitting in the back pew, waiting for permission to stop apologizing for being loved by God exactly as they are.If you were ever made to feel like your existence was an act of rebellion, this is your redemption song. Holy. Honest. Human. Hallelujah anyway.