The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly

Starred review from April 27, 2015
A harrowing opening scene immerses readers in 17-year-old narrator Minnow’s trauma, as she responds to a perceived threat with astonishing brutality, while carrying the skeletal remains of her own amputated hands. Minnow was five when her parents followed Prophet Kevin into the wilderness to found a rustic commune of Kevinians, who worship the God Charlie and obey prophesies divinely dictated to Kevin, such as, “It is my Commandment that ye do again this task, with Minnow, daughter of Samuel, for she be in need of spiritual intervention of the kind that marriage provides.” The narrative weaves between the hellish prison of the past that Minnow longed to escape and the juvenile prison she enters, which becomes an unexpected haven where she learns to read, make friends, and “think about the universe, and the earth, and the stars.” As Minnow recounts both shocking cruelty and acts of kindness—most movingly from her one friend outside the commune, the boy she assaulted, and her “lifer” cellmate—suspense, dread, and hope intermingle in Oakes’s charged, page-turning debut. Ages 14–up. Agent: Jennifer Laughran, Andrea Brown Literary Agency. (June)’

April 1, 2015
A girl who has just escaped a destructive cult after her hands were cut off lives in juvenile detention, found guilty of assault, a crime she indeed did commit. Minnow was taken at a young age to live with her family in an extreme cult called the Community. The Prophet rules through fear, inflicting sadistic punishments for any infraction, including chopping off Minnow's hands. Girls are kept illiterate, and polygyny is the order of the day. (Manufactured whole cloth by the Prophet, their religion has nothing to do with Christianity.) In the woods, she meets Jude, to whom she is drawn even though he is an outsider and forbidden. Jude tries to teach her to read, but he too has been kept in ignorance. While in juvenile detention, however, her savvy cellmate, Angel, introduces her to the world of science. Minnow learns to read and discovers that, although she believes she'll be sent to the adult prison when she turns 18, she would like to learn much more. Oakes uses flashbacks to slowly unveil the major plot-how Minnow lost her hands and the aftermath-as she follows Minnow's life in prison. The absurdity and cruelty of the cult and its Prophet also slowly come to light, all occurring as Minnow herself begins to find her own way. Dark and not just a little sensational but hugely involving nevertheless. (Fiction. 12-18)

April 1, 2015

Gr 9 Up-Minnow Bly survives when her hands are chopped off as punishment for refusing to wed the self-proclaimed "Kevinian" Prophet, leader of an oppressive, polygamous Montana wilderness cult in which she was raised. When someone sets fire to the Community and the Prophet is killed, Minnow runs away. Furious, frightened, and heartbroken, she lashes out and commits a hideous random assault, almost kicking a mentally disturbed young man to death-hence the gruesome, startling opening sentence, "I am a blood-soaked girl." Imprisoned for this crime in a juvenile detention facility until age 18, Minnow is coaxed to reveal the truth about the demise of the Community. As she struggles to understand the world around her and to choose what secrets to keep or let go, her tough yet wise cellmate Angel, murderer of an uncle for sexual assault, becomes a friend and guide. Minnow learns to read; discloses a secret, forbidden romance with Jude, a biracial boy she met in the forest; and finally reveals what actually happened the night the Community went up in flames. Based on Grimm's fairy tale, "The Handless Maiden," the powerful, fluent writing; engrossing and well-layered mystery; compelling characters; and provocative ideas about family, faith, honesty, loyalty, and friendship are engaging. VERDICT Ellen Hopkins devotees and fans of The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams (St. Martin's Griffin, 2009) will seek this one out.-Diane P. Tuccillo, Poudre River Public Library District, CO

Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2015
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* Traditional fairy tales include many disturbing, violent stories, but their sharp edges are often softened by magic, timely rescues, and the prevailing power of virtue over evil. Many YA authors rework those stories to remind us of their inherent darkness. Setting real-world trauma next to the gentler fairy-tale version simultaneously makes the trauma easier to bear while calling attention to the grimness of those stories, particularly regarding the casual cruelty against young women that often gets taken for granted. Stephanie Oakes' chilling debut novel takes that tactic one step further by bringing a particularly brutal tale, The Handless Maiden, to concrete, harrowing life; stripping it of its symbolism; and giving a powerfully realistic voice to its main character. When Oakes introduces Minnow for the first time, the 17-year-old handless girl is standing over the bloodied body of a young man mere hours after escaping the smoldering wreckage of the compound where she lived in the mountains. She's quickly picked up by the police and soon convicted of aggravated assault and sent to a juvenile-detention center. Once she's in prison, an FBI psychologist encourages Minnow to reveal what happened to her, and her story unfolds in a disaffected, yet bone-chillingly beautiful, first-person narrative. Minnow has spent 12 of her 17 years living with the Kevinians, a fanatical doomsday cult in the Montana mountains that follows the teachings of their prophet, Kevin. He demands unquestioning loyalty, which is not a good match for clever, curious Minnow, who, in spite of her skepticism and Kevin's harsh punishments for disobedience, is enchanted by his teachings and wants to find comfort in faith. But her disillusionment with Kevin comes to a horrific end when he announces that he intends to marry Minnow against her will. She attempts to escape but is caught. Outraged by her willfulness, Kevin commands her own father to cut off her hands with a hatchet. What the Brothers Grimm gloss over in The Handless Maiden, Oakes focuses on with almost surgical vividness: nerves severed, shuddering bones, the smell of blood. But Oakes explores far more than just the realism of the heinous punishment as, in stunningly spare and gorgeous language, Minnow speaks grimly yet eloquently of the aftermath. With simmering fury and sharp gallows humor, she reveals her bitterness and the shattered state of her faith and trust in the universe, but her frosty tone occasionally breaks to let out a glimmer of resonant shock, pain, and fear. All of these roil about as she comes to terms with her brutal mutilation and ponders the possible future. Minnow's experience includes vestiges of fairy-tale details that hint at Oakes' source material, but the heart of her storythe loss of agency at the hands of a power-hungry manis all too familiar, and Oakes brings that element home by populating Minnow's detention center with young girls who have been punished for fighting back. Many deserve to be there, maybe even Minnow, but justice is a murky concept for these appropriately angry young women, and Oakes subtly comments on the way attitudes about what girls deserve and what they are expected to endure arise, at least partially, from folktales, mythology, and biblical texts. Kevin's damaging prophesies are so unhinged from reality that it's easy to see how poisonous they are, but what about stories of witches, princesses, or even God? Are some of those stories any different from those written by a delusional man drunk on power? In Oakes' nuanced and haunting narrative, however, those questions become more ruminative than purely critical. For all her anger...