"The Chosen One" by Carol Lynch Williams

I took a shot at this book simply because it was there.

As one who travels a lot, I found myself engaged in the process of audiobooks for the passage of time.  Needing a new one to listen to, I opted for this story on nothing more than the basis of it being there.  I knew nothing about either the author nor the subject matter.  The sole information in my corner was it being a book written for young adults.  Therefore, my approach was entirely cold turkey.

I am certain it says something for the author when the story can be known from the first few sentences of page one.  Williams never explicitly states what is to come is a tale of a contemporary polygamous community where a young girl is married off to an old man; and yet I knew.  The interior dialogue Kira begins the story with says it all.  The question to be resolved, which propels a reader through the book, is whether it will be a tragic tale of abuse or an inspiring story of overcoming and rising above it all.

The essence of the story revolves around 13-year-old Kira.  She is daughter to the third wife of her father - a good man - and sister to multiple siblings.  She lives in a religious compound with a "prophet" being the leader, and the "god squad" serving as his enforcers.  If one does not obey the 'prophet' the 'god' squad comes looking for you.

Early on, the 'prophet' visits the trailer Kira lives in with her mother and siblings, proclaiming he has had a vision that Kira was to be the wife of her uncle, an older man in his fifties.  This uncle is the older brother of her father, a domineering figure who is a brutal as he is offensive.  Kira continually proclaims she will not marry the man, but inside she knows no way out of it.

This main thread of the story is interspersed with Kira falling in love with an older teenage boy, Joshua, who wishes to make Kira his wife for himself, and a driver of a county bookmobile, who parks his truck nearby the compound where Kira one day walks.  He permits her to borrow books, which opens a whole new world to her imagination.

Prophet Childs prohibited all books, aside from the Bible, long ago, making this venture onto the mobile library forbidden fruit enticing Kira further and further away from the strict religiosity of the compound.

I may never have read such a book that so draws me into its story, while repelling me by its content.  My heart went to Kira; and oddly, I thought of Anne Frank and the similar circumstances these two thirteen-year-old underwent.  I was furious at the men of this compound and their incessant using of the Bible to justify their own wickedness, giving these adolescent girls to these dirty old men, beating them, in the name of God, to teach them a lesson in obedience.  As a believer, to hear of men using God's Word in such nefarious ways, in such repugnant ways...  there are no words to describe the disgust, the revulsion, the fury at such people.  It must be akin to the stories I have heard of Muslim women in Muslim countries.  All one can sadly often do is shake ones head in sadness.

While I believe Carol Lynch Williams has written a superb story with vivid characters and a heroine one can honestly sympathize with through all her trials, the continual disappointments and the vile abuse she endures, it often makes one want to turn away, to not see Kira be broken again.  There is hope - and then there is disappointment; hope - and then disappointment.  Again and again; over and over.  Yet it is the character of this vibrant little girl, ensconced in a world not of her making, to carry a reader to the end.