Anita Shreve called this "One of the best novels I have ever read. A book for the ages." Set in a made-up version of rural New Hampshire this novel tells the story of Marjorie, a girl whose family is so isolated from society that they speak their own dialect and who are sinking deeper into economic ruin and the world of a sadistic cult leader.
"I am a grown woman now, married and raising children, and happy enough most of the time. Underneath that happiness, though, showing its face every now and again, is a part of me still connected to a time when I was a girl living with her parents in the New Hampshire hills. That girl was not treated well, and when anyone is hurt like that--especially a child--the hurt burrows down inside and makes a kind of museum there, with images of the bad times displayed on every wall. Some people try to forget the museum exists and keep their mind occupied with drink or drugs or food, or by staying busy with work, or they chase one kind of excitement after another, while the memories fester there in the dark. I understand all that, and I don't lay a judgement, as we used to say, over any of it. Some people use their own hurt as an excuse for hurting others, or for soaking in self-pity, or for a sharp anger that knifes up through the surface whenever something reminds them of what happened long ago. Some people spend thier lives trying never to do what was done to them." (p.1)
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