Summary | Excerpt | Reading Guide | Reviews | Beyond the book | Read-Alikes | Genres & Themes | Author Bio
Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Apr 2013, 320 pages
Paperback:
Feb 2014, 336 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Sharry Wright
Buy This Book
Amity & Sorrow is a story about God, sex, and farming. It's an unforgettable journey into the horrors a true believer can inflict upon his family, and what it is like to live when the end of the world doesn't come.
A mother and her daughters drive for days without sleep until they crash their car in rural Oklahoma. The mother, Amaranth, is desperate to get away from someone she's convinced will follow them wherever they go - her husband. The girls, Amity and Sorrow, can't imagine what the world holds outside their father's polygamous compound. Rescue comes in the unlikely form of Bradley, a farmer grieving the loss of his wife. At first unwelcoming to these strange, prayerful women, Bradley's abiding tolerance gets the best of him, and they become a new kind of family. An unforgettable story of belief and redemption, Amity & Sorrow is about the influence of community and learning to stand on your own.
1
The Red Country
Amity watches what looks like the sun. An orange ball spins high above her on a pole, turning in a hot, white sky. It makes her think of home and the temple; it makes her feel it is she who is spinning, turning about in a room filled with women, their arms raised, their skirts belling out like moons. She thinks how the moon will go bloodred and the sun turn black at the end of the world. She is watching for it still.
"Amity!" Her mother calls her back to earth, back to the gas station and the heat and the hard-baked ground, beckoning from beneath the metal canopy that shades the pumps. "Did you find anyone?" Amity walks back to her, sees that there is dried blood on her mothers face and figures she must have some, too, but neither of them can get into the bathroom to wash. The door is locked.
"I found a man," Amity says. "I talked to him."
"It's okay. I told you to. What did he say?"
The bathroom door is marked with a stick lady wearing a triangle ...
Amity and Sorrow is a highly fulfilling read about mothers and daughters, the nature of family, the complexity of relationships, of faith lost and found, of courage and new beginnings. I think women might enjoy this story more easily than men, but I would recommend this book for any adult who enjoys good storytelling, complex, well-drawn characters, and exquisite, lyrical writing...continued
Full Review
(785 words)
This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access,
become a member today.
(Reviewed by Sharry Wright).
Lori Lansens, author of The Girls
Amity and Sorrow, grace and hope, honor and innocence, bliss and deliverance - all of this from one beautifully nuanced story about the nature of family and the power of faith. I savored every word. Sigrid Nunez, author of The Last of Her Kind
A beautiful and terrifying book. Peggy Riley tells a complex and enthralling tale of family love and religious belief with uncommon wisdom, grace, and skill.The end is nigh!
Or so has been the claim for many years. And despite a success rate of zero, people continue to make passionate end of the world predictions, looking for the Apocalypse in just about every major turn of events from Y2K to Weapons of Mass Destruction to the ending of the Mayan Calendar. In fact, according to a survey taken in 2001 by the Barna Research Group, forty percent of Americans at that point believed that supernatural intervention would lead to the eventual end of the world.
The first recorded end of the world prediction came in 634 BCE. Over subsequent years, there have been many, many more. What follows is just a sampling.
This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.
If you liked Amity & Sorrow, try these:
by Craig Cliff
Published 2017
Playfully literate and strikingly original, an unforgettable debut novel about art, imitation, and obsession.
by Emma Donoghue
Published 2017
In Emma Donoghue's latest masterpiece, an English nurse brought to a small Irish village to observe what appears to be a miracle - a girl said to have survived without food for months - soon finds herself fighting to save the child's life.
The Stone Home
by Crystal Hana Kim
A moving family drama and coming-of-age story revealing a dark corner of South Korean history.
The Flower Sisters
by Michelle Collins Anderson
From the new Fannie Flagg of the Ozarks, a richly-woven story of family, forgiveness, and reinvention.
The Funeral Cryer by Wenyan Lu
Debut novelist Wenyan Lu brings us this witty yet profound story about one woman's midlife reawakening in contemporary rural China.
Your guide toexceptional books
BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.
