Tormented by his religious family and the broader conservative community of Pawleys Island, South Carolina, fourteen-year-old Josh struggles with the pressure to conform to their puritanical standards. As he embarks upon his high school years, Josh meets a supportive cast of eccentric small-town characters, falls in love with his classmate, becomes obsessed with David Bowie, and fumbles in his attempts to make his own thongs. But it’s when his elderly neighbor gives him a copy of Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” that he begins to understand his own sexuality. Our Bodies Electric is a coming-of-age story that celebrates the exuberance of youth, the individual quest for sexual identity, and the joy of finding connections in the most unexpected of places.

Praise for Our Bodies Electric

“In this spirited coming-of-age novel, Zack Vernon vividly renders Josh and his fellow middle-school misfits as they seek understanding and acceptance in a world that wishes only to trap them into a stifling conformity. Our Bodies Electric is poignant and comic, and Vernon’s linking Walt Whitman’s celebration of individuality to the characters adds to the novel’s pleasures.”

—Ron Rash, author of The Caretaker, Serena, and In the Valley

“Take one strong-willed and curious kid and set him spinning through a tumultuous adolescence in small-town South Carolina. Mix in sea turtles, Walt Whitman, surly waitresses, a snake charmer, and more than a few scorching summer days, et voila! You’ve got the unforgettable, enjoyable, and heartfelt Our Bodies Electric. The specificity of Josh and his friends—and their hijinks—on Pawleys Island are a lot of fun, but it’s also a special treat to see
Vernon speak about one young person’s journey and recognize something universal: the challenges and hard-fought rewards of figuring out who you want to be in the world.”

—Emily Nemens, author of The Cactus League

“I haven’t heard music so sweet and heartfelt since I first read Lewis Nordan. Imagine a novel that sings like a love-drunk cross between The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Breakfast Club. Now imagine it set in the sweltering heat of lowcountry South Carolina. Now imagine it told in the spirit of Walt Whitman. Now imagine that book in your hands.”

—Mark Powell, author of Hurricane Season and The Late Rebellion

“In this debut novel, Zack Vernon renders the awkward, glorious gauntlet of adolescence with wild tenderness. We come alongside Josh in his wrestle with a rigid theology, his flutterings of first love, and his passage through coming-of-age rites inflected by the offbeat, small-town culture of Pawleys Island, South Carolina. In one chapter, we’re cracking up over the shenanigans of young teens; in the next, we’re delighting in the realization that the body ‘was not a font of shame, nor was it a frail mechanism made of meat. It was a sparkling funhouse.’ More than anything, this book is about the miracle of the body beloved.”

—Jessie Van Eerdan, author of Call It Horses

“In Zack Vernon’s Our Bodies Electric, young protagonist Josh navigates the relentless world of ever-watchful parents and oddball friends, forever obsessed and enamored by the endless beauties of All Things Female. Josh is curious, intelligent, and intent on doing what’s right. How could so many plans go wrong? This is one heart-rending, comedic coming-of-age novel.”

—George Singleton, author of The Curious Lives of Nonprofit Martyrs

“Our Bodies Electric tickled my funny bone and my heart. Every page flickers with profound sincerity and indelible strangeness. I want to hug Josh and Chloe—and Zackary Vernon for writing such a beautiful story about the splendor and sadness of growing up. I only wish this book would’ve existed during my adolescence.”

—Caleb Johnson, author of Treeborne

“Zackary Vernon’s debut novel, Our Bodies Electric, is not only excruciatingly funny, but also a powerfully imaginative tour-de-force of endearing teenager Josh’s attempts to come to grips with the tyranny and impulses of his body—in face of his mother’s edict: ‘A mind full of sex is like a mind full of maggots.’ Indeed, Vernon’s sentences crackle with electricity; and, often, the emotional and sexual voltage is simply too much for Josh—who swelters in every valence of that word in the South Carolina Lowcountry that Vernon knows so well and dishes up so memorably. It’s like
a jolt from a 220 line—Walt Whitman hovering wryly in benediction over every syllable.””

—Joseph Bathanti, author of The Act of Contrition