A review by andintothetrees
Amity and Sorrow by Peggy Riley

4.0

This is a book that addresses a topic I am always interested in, but rarely get to read about, as it doesn’t seem to be a popular subject: life in a cult. It follows Amaranth, a mother, and her two barely-teenage daughters Amity and Sorrow, in the aftermath of their escape from a Mormon-inspired closed community somewhere in the US. Amaranth is the first, and (only) legal, wife of the cult’s founder and played a role in developing its traditions and practices (although more by lack of protest than deliberate design, most of the time). Her daughters have never seen the outside world, which lends their points of view an other-worldly quality as they see what to us is the everyday through new eyes – marvelling, for example, at how much uncessary stuff there is to buy in the average shopping street. The family escape by car, but are involved in a conflagration with a tree which renders them unable to continue driving, and instead they pitch up on a farm owned by the gruff, introspective, initially indifferent but ultimately good-hearted Bradley who is kept company by his elderly father and a young employee/unofficial foster son, Dust. Flashbacks are used to inform the reader about what life in the cult was like – stories are told of the fifty wives and their many children, how they came to join the “family” and how everyday life was managed there.