The Chosen One, Carol Lynch

Williams, Carol Lynch (2009).
The Chosen One
New York: St. Martin's Griffin
9780312555115
Genre: Realistic Fiction

Raised in an isolated polygamous community where she secretly reads mobile library books and wonders about her father's three wives and her twenty siblings, thirteen-year-old Kyra is forced to make a desperate choice when she is selected to be her sixty-year-old uncle's seventh wife.
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Kirkus claims this book is “intensely gripping and grippingly intense,” and I have to agree. Williams’ thirteen-year-old protagonist, Kyra, opens the novel with the statement, “If I was going to kill the Prophet, I’d do it in Africa.” Williams then maintains the readers’ attention as Kyra’s predicament unfolds. Traveling back and forth in time (before the decree and after), Kyra describes her life amid The Chosen Ones. Her father, three mothers and 21 siblings live among others of the same belief system of which Prophet Childs is the leader. Kyra believes her secret visits to the bookmobile, the books she’s guiltily and hungrily read as well as her innocent relationship with Joshua, a teen member of her cult—all of which are illegal—have led to the proclamation that she must marry her sixty-year-old uncle. While she tries to resist the decree and begs her non-violent father to help her, Kyra also begins to notice her family’s situation: Why does her mother have to have so many children? Why can’t her mother get medical help? Why is Dr. Seuss so bad? and where have the other members, the members who questioned the Prophet, disappeared to? When Joshua appeals to the Prophet, Joshua is beaten and given time to escape; Williams alludes to violent torture and murder as the boy, with others, runs for his life. Williams increases the tension as readers wonder if Kyra will have the strength to escape, knowing her family will lose everything, or if she will dutifully carry out her obligations.
Williams’ final harrowing 30 pages will hold the attention of even the most reluctant reader: will Kyra live with the fact that she knows the Elders killed the bookmobile driver? Can she, will she, try to escape once more? Will she be successful? While there have been many cult novels, Williams’ offers a very real and positive ending for Kyra.