13 year old Kyra has grown up in an isolated desert compound, living in a mobile home with her mother and siblings. Her father spends every third week with her mother, since he has 2 other wives in nearby trailers with a total of 20 children. Everyone in this compound is devoted to Prophet Childs. They’ve rejected the outside world, technology, and burned their books; they believe through obedience to the Prophet, plural marriage and the abundant production of children they can achieve a place in Heaven.
Kyra doesn’t question this life much – she loves her family and feels safe in their compound – but she does miss reading and secretly leaves the compound once a week to visit a county mobile book library; and she feels drawn to Joshua, a boy in their community whom she meets secretly and hopes he’ll chose her to eventually be his first wife. But when the Prophet decrees that she must marry her 60 year old uncle, becoming his 7th wife, Kyra rebels. Her actions bring down swift, painful and ominous retribution on herself, Joshua, and her family. Kyra must decide if she has the courage and the strength of will to survive or be beaten into submission.
Carol Lynch Williams’ The Chosen One captures the terror and conflict that Kyra feels as she fully realizes, for the first time, the hypocrisy and injustice of their lives. Williams shows the intricate web of deception, fear, and intimidation the Prophet and his gang of thugs have woven to maintain order and control and she also expertly illustrates the conflicting emotions Kyra and her family feel as they try to balance what’s being demanded of them against the all-encompassing power of the Prophet and their hopes to achieve immortal salvation.
Difficult subject matter, with every horror we’ve heard about (or imagined) coming from the real life fundamentalist polygamists sects, make for an intense read. It’s easy to identify with Kyra and her struggle to get out of this life and it’s scary to think that these kinds of things are really going on in America.
- Posted by Cori
Another thought: as scary as it is to read a story like this and be able to identify with the protagonist because she sees and wants to escape – I wonder, wouldn’t it be more troubling to read the same story from the point of view of a girl who accepts and believes in what’s happening to her? As a reader, I think I’d feel even more disturbed and sick to my stomach if we could see the hypocrisy in that world and we just had to watch her blindly embrace such an existence. I shudder at the thought.
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