Toews, Miriam

"For the past two years women and girls in a Mennonite colony have been repeatedly violated in the night by 'demons' coming to punish them for their sins. Now the women have learned they were in fact drugged and attacked by a group of men from their own community. Determined to protect themselves and their daughters from future harm, the women meet while the men of the colony are off in the city, attempting to raise enough money to bail out the rapists and bring them home. These women---all illiterate, unable even to speak the language of the country they live in--must choose: Stay in the only world they've ever known, or dare to escape?"--OCLC.

One evening, eight Mennonite women climb into a hay loft to conduct a secret meeting. For the past two years, each of these women, and more than a hundred other girls in their colony, has been repeatedly violated in the night by demons coming to punish them for their sins. Now that the women have learned they were in fact drugged and attacked by a group of men from their own community, they are determined to protect themselves and their daughters from future harm. While the men of the colony are off in the city, attempting to raise enough money to bail out the rapists and bring them home, these women, all illiterate, without any knowledge of the world outside their community and unable even to speak the language of the country they live in, have very little time to make a choice: Should they stay in the only world they've ever known or should they dare to escape?.

Sixteen-year-old Nomi struggles not to give in to despair when her mother and sister flee their home in East Village, a Mennonite community in Manitoba, leaving her in the care of her increasingly depressed father.

Nomi Nickel explores her options in the Mennonite community her mother and sister have recently fled and rebels as her father withdraws.

Sixteen-year-old Nomi Nickel searches for the truth when her mother and sister disappear from their Mennonite home.

Miriam Toews chronicles her father's lifelong battle with depression and discusses how his illness affected life in the small Mennonite community where they lived.