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Why Beulah Shot her Pistol Inside the Baptist Church is a smartly written tale of a young Mississippi girl, Beulah Buchanan, raised in the Primitive Baptist Church.

When she was only sixteen, she marries Ralph Rainey, a much older man who is a deacon in the church. Beulah has no feelings for Rainey, she hardly even knows him, but he talks sweet to her and tells her she is pretty and so she imagines that life with him would be far better than the one she knew with her oppressive parents.

Beulah was mistaken.  Ralph Rainey’s idea of a wife turns out to be nothing short of slavery and for the next six years, Beulah works in her domineering husband’s cafe all day and cooks him dinner at home every night. He doesn’t touch her lovingly, but climbs on top of her once in a while for sex.  Beulah longs for a gentle touch, and her loneliness leads her to an affair with the preacher.  With this affair, everything begins to unravel.

Sullivan writes this story through Beulah’s voice and he does an excellent job of showing us Beulah’s good heart and potential without compromising the story’s integrity.  This novel has humor, some dark, which makes Beulah’s life with Ralph Rainey that much more convincing.  A poignant moment for Beulah is when her husband sets his old tired working mule on fire. The scene is disturbing, terrifying and yet, humorous too.

If you grew up in the rural south, you will appreciate the novel for its authenticity, sad as it may be. If you did not, it’s as good as taking a trip into the life of a poor Mississippi girl.

The last chapters are unpredictable. The decisions Beulah makes in the last chapters are a bit puzzling perhaps to ensure an unpredictable final chapter, but in no way to did her decisions lessen her authenticity as a rural Mississippi girl in, as the author says, “a rural rut.”