Devoted
A Novel
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
From Jennifer Mathieu, the author of The Truth About Alice comes a novel about the courage to believe and what it means to be truly devoted.
Rachel Walker is devoted to God. She prays every day, attends Calvary Christian Church with her family, helps care for her five younger siblings, dresses modestly, and prepares herself to be a wife and mother who serves the Lord with joy. But Rachel is curious about the world her family has turned away from, and increasingly finds that neither the church nor her homeschool education has the answers she craves. Rachel has always found solace in her beliefs, but now she can't shake the feeling that her devotion might destroy her soul.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Rachel, the second sister of 10 children, attends Calvary Christian Church in Clayton, Tex. When she's not at church, she cares for her younger siblings and household, "learning how to be a wife and mother; a helpmeet with a cheerful countenance." Unlike her older sister, Faith, 17-year-old Rachel struggles to accept this apparently inevitable future: her father makes her destroy A Wrinkle in Time, a book that he says dishonors the Lord, and Faith corrects her for unintentionally defying "biblical femininity." Employing first-person, present-tense narration, Mathieu (The Truth About Alice) draws readers close to the drama raging in Rachel's mind, while she performs repetitive, stifling tasks. When her parents discover her most brazen sin, defying her father's order to avoid "those who have left the flock," they present Rachel with a choice: attend a camp she fears will brainwash her or leave home. This exploration of life within and removed from a fundamentalist community makes for riveting reading, all the more poignant for the sympathetic characters in both worlds. Ages 12 up.
Customer Reviews
Devoted
Mathieu delivers stunning prose and an evocative subject that brought me to tears at times.