Amity & Sorrow

Descriere de la o altă ediție sau format:
AMITY & SORROW is a story about God, sex, and farming. It's THE LOVELY BONES meets WITNESS: an unforgettable journey into the horrors a true believer can inflict upon his family, and what it is like to live when the end of the world doesn't come.

In the wake of a suspicious fire, Amaranth gathers her children and flees from the cult where her children were born and raised. Now she is on the run with no one but her barely-teenage daughters, Amity and Sorrow, neither of whom have ever seen the outside world, to help her. After four days of driving without sleep, Amaranth crashes the car, leaving the family stranded at a gas station, unsure of what to do next. Rescue comes in the unlikely form of a downtrodden farmer, a man who offers sanctuary when the women need it most.

AMITY & SORROW is the story of these remarkable women, their lives before the night they fled, and their heartbreaking, hopeful future. Over the course of a season Amaranth will test the limits of her faith, and her daughters will test the limits of her patience. While Amity blossoms in this new world, free from her father's forbidding rules and ecstatic worship, Sorrow will move heaven and earth trying to get back home... And, meanwhile, the outside world hasn't forgotten about the fire on the compound.

"Amity & Sorrow, grace and hope, honor and innocence, bliss and deliverance-all of this from one beautifully nuanced story about the nature of family and the power of faith. I savored every word."—Lori Lansens, author of The Girls
"A beautiful and terrifying book. Peggy Riley tells a complex and enthralling tale of family love and religious belief with uncommon wisdom, grace, and skill."—Sigrid Nunez, author of The Last of Her Kind
"Amity & Sorrow is a startlingly original, intelligent and beautiful first novel that I found riveting from page one. I can only wait with great anticipation for what comes next from Peggy Riley."—Michael Connelly, author of The Black Box
"Fierce and disturbing.... Riley's debut novel is a harsh but compassionate look at nature vs. nurture through the lens of a polygamous cult."—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
"[An] accomplished, harrowing debut.... Riley's descriptive prose is rich in metaphor.... [and] the haunting literary drama simmers to a boil as it deftly navigates issues of family, faith, community, and redemption."—Ann Kelley, Booklist (Starred Review)
"A literary page-turner.... Her writing is clear, crisp, chilling..."—Reader's Digest
"Fierce and disturbing.... A harsh but compassionate look at nature vs. nurture."—The Washington Examiner
"Gripping.... a must-read for book lovers."—Ladies Home Journal
A powerful book about hope and redemption, as well as the perils of unquestioned belief and obedience."—SheKnows.com
"[A] shimmering first novel.... This delicately stitched, finely patterned and poetic novel suggests there is a tipping point at which human resilience disappears.... Riley has a gift for metaphor that gives this novel loft, and a rhythmic way of swinging from present to past."—Dylan Landis, New York Times Book Review
"Hooks readers from its riveting opening.... What makes AMITY & SORROW so fascinating is Riley's compassionate portrayal of these women...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, Bookpage
"Harrowing, suspenseful and insightful, this is a stunning meditation on innocence lost and good turned evil."—Donna Marchetti, Cleveland Plain Dealer

Peggy Riley is a writer and playwright. She recently won a Highly Commended prize in the 2011 Bridport Prize. Her short fiction has been broadcast on BBC Radio and has been published in "New Short Stories 4", Mslexia Magazine, and as an app on Ether Books. Her plays have been commissioned and produced off-West End, regionally and on tour. She has been a festival producer, a bookseller, and writer-in-residence at a young offender's prison. Originally from Los Angeles, Peggy now lives on the North Kent coast in Britain. She is currently working on her second novel, which will be set in the women's internment camp on the Isle of Man during WWII.