From highly acclaimed, award-winning author Christopher Meades comes a magical, provocative tale of forbidden love and one girl's struggle for liberation
Hanna has never been outside her secluded community of Clearhaven. She has never questioned why her father has four wives or why she has fourteen brothers and sisters. And in only one week, on her eighteenth birthday, Hanna will follow tradition and become the fifth wife of a man more than twice her age.
But just days before the wedding, Hanna meets Daniel, an enigmatic stranger who challenges her to question her fate and to follow her own will. Then her mother tells her a secret—one that could grant Hanna the freedom she's known only in her dreams. As her world unravels around her, Hanna must decide whether she was really meant for something greater than the claustrophobic world of Clearhaven. But can she abandon her beloved younger sister and the only home she's ever known? Or is there another option—one too fantastical to believe?
With lush, evocative prose, Christopher Meades takes readers on an emotional journey into a fascinating, unknown world—and, along the way, brilliantly illuminates complexities of faith, identity and how our origins shape who we are.
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“Narrator Caitlin Kelly’s clear, emotionally fluid voice delivers the story of Hanna’s struggle against the tradition of marriage at age eighteen…Kelly’s melodious voice draws listeners into this unusual story of love between Hanna and Daniel, their discovery of the outside world, and their discontent with the isolated society in which they were raised.”
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