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The Celestial Wife: A Novel

By (author) Leslie Howard

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A young fundamentalist Mormon girl facing a forced marriage escapes her strict, polygamist community and comes of age in the tumultuous 1960s in this captivating novel inspired by shockingly true events. Keep sweet no matter what, for this is the way to be lifted up Keep sweet with every breath, for it is a matter of life or death 1964. Fifteen-year-old Daisy Shoemaker dreams of life beyond her small, isolated fundamentalist Mormon community of Redemption on the Canadaâ€”US borderâ€”despite Bishop Thorsenâ€™s warning that the outside world is full of sin. According to the Principle, the only way to enter the celestial kingdom is through plural marriage. While the boys are taught to work in the lucrative sawmill that supports their enclave, Daisy and her best friend, Brighten, are instructed to keep sweet and wait for Placementâ€”the day the bishop will choose a husband for them. But Daisy wants to be more than a sister-wife and a mother. So when she is placed with a man forty years her senior, she makes the daring decision to flee Redemption. Years later, Daisy has a job and a group of trustworthy friends. Emboldened by the ideas of the feminist and counterculture movements, she is freer than she has ever beenâ€¦until Brighten reaches out with a cry for help and Daisyâ€™s past comes hurtling back. But to save the women she left behind, Daisy must risk her newfound independence and return to Redemption, where hellfire surely awaits. For readers of Emma Clineâ€™s The Girls and Ami McKayâ€™s The Virgin Cure comes an arresting coming-of-age novel about a fearless young girlâ€™s fight for freedom at a time of great historic change.