Colony Girl

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY 30 AUG 1999

Though she attends a public high school, shows up at parties and lands a highway road-crew summer job, everyone knows 15-year-old Eve is a Colony girl--part of a Christian religious settlement surrounded by cornfields outside Arhat, Iowa. We meet her drunk and throwing up at a party--and falling in love with the host's father, who is trying to help her. In such circumstances, Eve usually reminds people she can't have a ride home--"no cars in the Bible." Life at the Colony follows strict rules, as set by autocratic, charismatic religious leader Gordon ("no last names in the Bible"), but recently Gordon has been in a bit of a slump. He drinks and watches old reruns, and is inspired only when his satellite dish picks up what he's sure is an original I Love Lucy signal, bouncing around in space. Gordon cuts Eve a lot of slack because her mother once was his lover, and Eve has become his spunky young soul mate. Eve takes advantage of her relative freedom, trying very hard to lose her virginity to her hunky boyfriend, Joey, or his father, whichever one she can seduce first. But when Gordon announces that he plans to take one of Eve's teenage friends as his bride, Eve sets off on a campaign to ruin him, aided by information she garners from a businessman who owns the local strip joint. Rayfiel (Split Levels) doesn't give readers a full dose of either satire or coming-of-age story, though there are elements of both here, subtly fused in a smart, funny, oddball story that has much truth and wit, and a deliciously lusty, smart teenage narrator. Though Eve's final escape seems a little abrupt, by the time she leaves, readers will be convinced that the ex-Colony girl has all it takes to survive in the real world.