Fifteen-year old
Loretta hates her life in the fundamentalist Mormon community of
which her family is a part. She dreams of escape. Although she's not
ready to run, she spends her nights meeting Bradshaw, a gentile boy,
and making out in his car. He urges her to go away with him, but she
hesitates too long, and one night her father catches her crawling
back in the window. He beats her, nails her window shut and marries
her off to Dean, a man his own age, who has a wife and children.
Although trapped in
her new life and repeatedly raped by her husband, Loretta still
dreams of freedom and eventually makes her escape with Jason, Dean's
teenage nephew. They take off looking for Dean's cache of gold.
This book is not
easy to like. The Mormon characters are bigoted and self-righteous.
Their treatment of Loretta is basically child abuse. Loretta is
supposed to be a sympathetic character, but she comes across as
calculating. Jason was more sympathetic, but not enough
to carry the story.
The narrative is not
always easy to follow. The story is told from the point of view of a
shifting cast of characters including musings by Evel Knievel, which
I thought added little to the plot. I felt sad for the people trapped
in strict, humorless communities, but they weren't particularly
sympathetic or likable.
I received the book
from Penguin Books for this review.
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