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Amity & Sorrow: A Novel
Author:
Riley, Peggy
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Class:
Fiction
Age: Adult
Language: English
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LC: PS3618
Print Run: 60000
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ISBN-13: 9780316220880
LCCN: 2012021926
Imprint: Little, Brown and Company
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Pub Date: 04/16/2013
Availability: Out of Stock Indefinitely
List: $25.99
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Hardcover
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Physical Description:
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312 p. ; 25 cm.
H 9.5",
W 6.25",
D 1",
1.29 lbs.
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LC Series:
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Brodart Sources:
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Brodart's Insight Catalog: Adult
Brodart's TOP Adult Titles
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Bibliographies:
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Awards:
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Booklist Starred Reviews
Publishers Weekly Starred Reviews
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Starred Reviews:
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Booklist
Publishers Weekly
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TIPS Subjects:
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Domestic Fiction
Young Adult
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BISAC Subjects: |
FICTION / Literary
FICTION / Religious
FICTION / Women
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LC Subjects:
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Domestic fiction
Marital conflict, Fiction
Married people, Fiction
Polygamy, Fiction
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SEARS Subjects: |
Domestic fiction
Interpersonal relations, Fiction
Married people, Fiction
Polygamy, Fiction
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Reading Programs: |
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| Annotations |
| Brodart's TOP Adult Titles | 01/01/2013 |
| Driving toward freedom sends a pair of daughters literally crashing into a new life when their mother crashes the car in Oklahoma. The world beyond their dad's compound means a life outside of the polygamous way, and sisters Amity and Sorrow soon find hope in an unlikely widowed farmer offering help. Debut Novel, 320pp., 60K, Auth res: Britain |
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| Starred Reviews: |
| Booklist | 02/01/2013 |
| In this accomplished, harrowing debut, Amaranth flees her polygamist community with her two teenage daughters, Amity and Sorrow, only to crash her car four days later in the Oklahoma panhandle. Chapters alternate between the present and the past, which reveals communal life with 50 wives (Amaranth is the first) and their husband, Zachariah. Here, arbitrary rules are made in the name of God, and women are given skills for Armageddon and taught to embrace the end of the world. Two events precipitate the flight: a fire in the temple and the discovery that Zachariah has been molesting his daughter, Sorrow, convincing her he is God and that, together, they can make Jesus. In the present, Amaranth comes to view farmer Bradley, owner of the farm where they crashed, as a chance to start over, but damaged Sorrow, who reads oracles in a blue pottery shard, remains steadfastly tied to her beliefs and community. Twelve-year-old Amity, meanwhile, hopes to heal her older sister. Award-winning playwright Riley's descriptive prose is rich in metaphor, and each of her three nuanced main characters are bound in different ways to the overarching theme of the novel: all journeys are made in faith. Owing a debt of gratitude to Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, which Riley acknowledges, this story is slow to build, but the haunting literary drama simmers to a boil as it deftly navigates issues of family, faith, community, and redemption. Kelley, Ann. 320p. AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, c2013. |
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| Publishers Weekly | 01/07/2013 |
| Playwright Riley's debut novel is a harsh but compassionate look at nature vs. nurture through the lens of a polygamous cult. Sisters Amity and Sorrow were born and raised by their mother, Amaranth, the first of the 50 wives of a self-proclaimed prophet, the leader--"preacher, father, husband"--of a doomsday sect. When a confrontation with the law results in gunshots and a fire, Amaranth grabs her teenage daughters, steals a car, and drives for four days until, exhausted, she crashes near a gas station in rural Oklahoma. Sorrow, a self-righteous teenage sociopath who will destroy anyone and anything to prove she is God's chosen one, locks herself in the bathroom, where she has a miscarriage. The more compliant Amity is torn between her mother and her sister, on one side, and a world she's never experienced on the other. As they explore this new world, meeting people and making their own choices for the first time, Sorrow, with off-putting self-involvement masquerading as religious fervor, tries to destroy everyone who tries to help them. Riley's mastery keeps this unusual tale from descending into melodrama, and she makes no easy choices. Sorrow's desperate escalations lead to an unsurprising revelation that is no less powerful for its foreshadowing. A fierce and disturbing novel. Agent: Joy Harris, the Joy Harris Literary Agency. (Apr.). 320p. PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, c2013. |
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| Journal Reviews |
| BookPage | 04/01/2013 |
| These days, polygamous sects are dominating the news and entertainment headlines. Playwright Peggy Riley feeds that fascination with her debut novel, Amity & Sorrow, the suspenseful story of a mother and her two daughters after their escape from a polygamous, fundamentalist cult. Amity & Sorrow hooks readers from its riveting opening: Amaranth has just escaped the cult with Sorrow and Amity, fleeing across the country by car. Hysterical and sleep deprived, Amaranth totals the car when they reach rural Oklahoma, leading her older daughter Sorrow to flee from the wreckage. When Amaranth, Amity and a widowed farmer named Bradley discover Sorrow locked in Bradley's gas station bathroom, she is miscarrying. Who could have gotten Sorrow pregnant? Without a car or provisions, where will Amaranth and her daughters go? And what exactly are they running from? Told from the viewpoints of all three women, the novel gradually reveals a troubling history of abuse. Amaranth is terrified that her husband will hunt them down. Sorrow--the most religious of the three and a zealous pyromaniac--not only demands to return to the compound, but also is convinced that she is an oracle, set forth on earth to deliver God's message. Amity is merely attempting to join the real world by learning how to read, with Bradley's aging father acting as her teacher. And then there is Bradley, who must ultimately decide what to do with these women who refuse to leave his front porch. However, Sorrow will stop at nothing to return to what she sees as her rightful place by her father's side. But the reasoning behind her desire to go back is more complicated than it appears. What makes Amity & Sorrow so fascinating is Riley's compassionate portrayal of these women. Whether she's explaining the pull that drew Amaranth to her husband in the first place, the power he holds over his many wives or the shock that both daughters face when dealing with the outside world, each emotion is captured exquisitely. This novel is not sensationalist, but rather realistic and frightening as it captures the horrors of real-life cults. Megan Fishmann. 320pg. BOOKPAGE, c2013. |
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| Kirkus Reviews | 02/01/2013 |
| The eponymous title refers to the daughters of Amaranth, the first wife (out of 50) of Zachariah, Messianic leader of a Doomsday cult. The novel opens with Amaranth on the lam with her two daughters, trying desperately to put some distance between herself and Zachariah, who's recently tried to burn down the compound where they all lived. Exhausted after four days of travel, Amaranth crashes the car in rural Oklahoma, while at the same time Sorrow experiences a miscarriage. It eventually becomes clear that Zachariah sees himself as God and is also trying to father God, and Sorrow--also known as the Oracle--is the holy vessel to accomplish this task. Sorrow wants nothing more than to "go home" to Zachariah (she makes weird threats to Amity such as "The devil will fork your tongue and fry you" ) but Amaranth has recently become so spooked by Zachariah's growing megalomania that she feels she no longer has a home. The car crash occurrs near an almost-abandoned gas station and farm owned by Bradley, whose wife has left him. Although Amaranth is slow to share information about her past, Bradley picks up some negative vibes and at first wants the three of them off his property. Through flashbacks we get glimpses into the lives Amaranth, Sorrow and Amity have led with Zachariah, shielded from the world and subject to his apocalyptic paranoia. Zachariah's 39th wife is a "daughter of Waco" and so knows something about government persecution of religious cults, and Amaranth had suspicions that Zachariah might have been leading the women and children to a Jim Jones-style Kool-Aid annihilation. Bradley and Amaranth ultimately--perhaps inevitably--become lovers and begin to build a new family, all the while fearing Zachariah will catch up with them. Simple in style but complex in tone, this book raises troubling questions about the power of doomladen cults, and their leaders and followers. 320pg. KIRKUS MEDIA LLC, c2013. |
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| Library Journal | 05/01/2013 |
| With her deeply traumatized daughters Amity and Sorrow in tow, Amaranth flees her life as the first of 50 wives in a doomsday cult that went up in flames in the Idaho panhandle. Amaranth drives for four days until she crashes her car near a hardscrabble Oklahoma farm. At first, the farm's owner, Bradley, wants nothing to do with the trio, but Amaranth tells him she has nowhere else to go and that she fears her megalomaniacal husband will track them down. Twelve-year-old Amity, whip-smart though illiterate, tries to make sense of her new life while trying to protect Sorrow, who spirals further into religious insanity, desperate to return to the father who raped her. VERDICT This debut novel from an American playwright now living in England is a vivid, horrifying, gorgeously atmospheric tale of the collateral damage sustained by the young victims of polygamous doomsday cults. With a reading group guide. [See Prepub Alert, 10/28/12.]. Beth Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI. 320p. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2013. |
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| Library Journal Prepub Alert | 10/29/2012 |
| The author of award-winning short fiction and a playwright whose works have been produced off-West End, Riley writes about a woman named Amaranth, who's escaping with daughters Amity and Sorrow from her husband's polygamous cult. Their car having crashed in rural Oklahoma, they are rescued by a farmer named Bradley who's mourning the death of his wife. Clearly, new bonds will be formed and new understanding emerge; watch it. 336p. LJ Prepub Alert Online Review. LIBRARY JOURNAL, c2012. |
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9780316220880,dl.it[0].title
| Review Citations |
| New York Times Book Review | 04/14/2013 |
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