Amity & Sorrow

Starred review from January 7, 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.

February 1, 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.

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November 15, 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 escapes with daughters Amity and Sorrow from her husband's polygamous cult. Watch.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 1, 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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

May 1, 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

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.