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 secretone 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 optionone too fantastical to believe?
With lush, evocative prose, Christopher Meades takes readers on an emotional journey into a fascinating, unknown worldand, 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.”
— AudioFile
“Meades portrays a strong, independently minded young woman on the brink of adulthood in a story laced with magic realism and questions of faith about her struggle to choose between tradition and her own free will.”
— Booklist“Hanna’s plight is sure to move many readers.”
— Publishers Weekly“Characters are dynamic, full of complex needs and desires, and the story moves quickly with ever increasing urgency…An engrossing, richly layered novel.”
— Kirkus Reviews“A powerful meditation on how we define ourselves, the gift and cruelty of faith, and the redemptive act of storytelling.”
— Erika Swyler, bestselling author of The Book of SpeculationBe the first to write a review about this audiobook!
Christopher Meades is the author of several novels, including The Last Hiccup, which won the 2013 Canadian Authors Association Award for Fiction. His work has appeared in several literary journals including the Potomac Review and the Fiddlehead.
Caitlin Kelly, an Earphones Award–winning narrator, is a seasoned voice-over artist with experience in Japan and the United States. She has a BFA in drama and studied musical theater at the Collaborative Arts Project 21, an off-Broadway theater company and musical theater training conservatory. She got started in voice-over work in 2009 while living in Japan where she toured with Disney’s World of English and World Family Club as a performer and a puppeteer.