The Bible Salesman was published by Little, Brown in 2008, Edgerton’s first novel not published by Algonquin. Henry Dampier is a twenty-year-old Baptist from small-town North Carolina who sells Bibles door to door — a job he performs with genuine enthusiasm, because he believes in the product. Preston Clearwater is a fast-talking car thief who needs a driver. Preston recognizes in Henry exactly what every con artist needs: a sincere, trustworthy face and an inability to imagine that other people might be lying.
The novel follows Henry and Preston across the rural South in a series of stolen cars, each escapade escalating from petty theft toward genuine danger. Henry’s innocence is not stupidity — he is observant, thoughtful, and increasingly uneasy — but his worldview, shaped by the church and the small town, does not include a category for people like Preston. He cannot believe that someone so charming, so friendly, so apparently generous could be fundamentally dishonest.
Edgerton uses the relationship to explore a quintessentially American dynamic: the tension between sincerity and performance, between the Bible salesman (who believes what he’s selling) and the con artist (who sells what the mark believes). The 1950s setting heightens the contrast: a decade in which America’s public culture was saturated with religious and patriotic sincerity while its private culture was increasingly driven by salesmanship and self-interest.
Collecting The Bible Salesman
First edition (Little, Brown, New York, 2008): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $10–$25
- Very good/very good: $5–$12