17 year old Prenna James’ life is controlled by a strict set of rules, a community whose leaders know all about her movements and activities, and a deeply unsettling fear of exposure. While she and the other community members partake in average, everyday American life in their Upstate New York town, they are nonetheless separate and secretive, limiting the ways in which they interact with “the natives.” At first one assumes Prenna is part of a religious community, or something akin to the community from Lois Lowry’s phenomenal The Giver. Unquestioned loyalty and obedience is required by all and deviation receives swift, harsh, and final punishment. But there are hints to something more as we get to know Prenna: there’s a terrible tragedy she and the others have escaped from that haunts them to this day.
For the most part, Prenna is convinced that following the community’s rules is paramount to their survival. But she has secrets too: dreams of a life not governed by fear, not hindered by the rules, and the wish for the freedom to just be. Her most secret desire, one that overwhelms her and tempts her to break every last rule, is her attraction senior Ethan Jarves, even though she knows that she can never allow anything to happen with him. When a homeless man that Ethan has befriended approaches Prenna and shares with her some shocking revelations about the real motives behind the community leaders’ rules and power, Prenna is shaken to the core and at a loss about whom to trust. It would seem that Ethan knows more about Prenna’s reality than she does and very soon, she’s forced to trust Ethan with every secret she’s been sworn to keep.
As Prenna and Ethan race against time to stop an event that will change the course of life on Earth (in more ways than one), Prenna finds herself unable to resist the temptation to grab ahold of Ethan and all he represents to her. And in so doing, Prenna experiences something she thought she’d never have, and it’s a beautiful thing: “Lying here like this, I can imagine happiness. Not a kicky, bright kind, but a full, almost aching kind, both dark and light. I can see the whole world in this way. I can imagine extending the feeling to other places and parts of the day. I can imagine holding it in my pocket like a lens, and bringing it out so that I can look through it and remember again and again the world that has this feeling in it.” (138). That is, without doubt, one of the most beautiful descriptions of love, happiness, and joy I’ve read.
- Posted by Cori