Bedford Public Library

Gather the daughters, a novel, Jennie Melamed

eng

no index present

novels

Gather the daughters

Jennie Melamed

a novel

A smoldering debut about an insular community on an island at the end of the world and the girls who start to question the rules that bind them"Years ago, just before the country was incinerated to wasteland, ten men and their families colonized an island off the coast. They built a radical society of ancestor worship, controlled breeding, and the strict rationing of knowledge and history. Only the Wanderers-- chosen male descendants of the original ten-- are allowed to cross to the wastelands. At the first sign of puberty, their daughters face their Summer of Fruition, a ritualistic season that drags them from adolescence to matrimony. They have children, who have children, and when they are no longer useful, they take their final draft and die. One summer little Caitlin Jacob sees something so contradictory to the laws of the island that she must share it with the others..."--, Provided by the publisher