The Ash Family
A Novel
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
When a young woman leaves her family to join a secret off-the-grid community headed by an enigmatic leader, she discovers that belonging comes with a deadly cost, in this “stunning debut,” (The New Yorker) “perfect for fans of Philip Roth’s American Pastoral and the film Martha Marcy May Marlene” (Booklist, starred review).
At nineteen, Berie encounters a seductive and mysterious man at a bus station near her home in North Carolina. Shut off from the people around her, she finds herself compelled by his promise of a new life. He ferries her into a place of order and chaos: the Ash Family farm. There, she joins a community living off the fertile land of the mountains, bound together by high ideals and through relationships she can’t untangle. Berie—now renamed Harmony—renounces her old life and settles into her new one on the farm. She begins to make friends. And then they start to disappear.
“An excellent debut, Molly Dektar probes life in a cult with a masterful hand, excavating the troubled mind of a young woman,” (Publishers Weekly). The Ash Family explores what we will sacrifice in the search for happiness, and the beautiful and grotesque power of the human spirit as it seeks its ultimate place of belonging. “A captivating and haunting tale” (New York Journal of Books).
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Molly Dektar’s debut novel about life in an off-the-grid cult is dark and hypnotic, and her stunning descriptions of nature make the book buzz with life. To teenager Beryl, the Ash Family sounds perfect—a tight-knit community living off the land in Appalachia, unshackled from consumerism. But from the get-go, Dektar drops hints that things aren’t quite right: locked doors, mind games, and friends who abruptly disappear. As the tension ratchets up, the aspiring utopia starts to seem more and more like a horror show with no escape. But is Beryl already too entrenched to get out? Dektar keeps us guessing until the end.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In her excellent debut, Dektar probes life in a cult with a masterful hand, excavating the troubled mind of a young woman who joins what she thinks is a modern-day commune. Rather than boarding a plane for college, 19-year-old Berie leaves her home in Durham, N.C., and meets an alluring man named Bay at an Asheville, N.C., bus stop. He invites her into the Ash family fold, where he tells her she can stay "three days, or the rest of your life" on their co-op farm tucked away in the mountains. The Ash family follows a hypnotic and powerful leader called Dice, who engages in violent "actions" against developers who will harm the natural world. Dice dubs Berie "Harmony," and she begins the hardworking life of living off the grid and rejecting everything outside the family as a "fake world." Berie cuts off her mother and ex-boyfriend, believing that she has found a place where she belongs, but as much as she struggles for trust and acceptance and craves intimacy with Bay she makes mistakes and pays the price. She also learns that the family can be a threat to those who go astray. Dektar's eloquent, often poetic prose draws readers into this disturbing, powerful novel.
