Vern – seven months pregnant and desperate to escape the strict religious compound where she was raised – flees for the shelter of the woods. There, she gives birth to twins, and plans to raise them far from the influence of the outside world.
But even in the forest, Vern is a hunted woman. Forced to fight back against the community that refuses to let her go, she unleashes incredible brutality far beyond what a person should be capable of, her body wracked by inexplicable and uncanny changes.
To understand her metamorphosis and to protect her small family, Vern has to face the past, and more troublingly, the future – outside the woods. Finding the truth will mean uncovering the secrets of the compound she fled but also the violent history in America that produced it.
Sorrowland by Rivers Salomon is quite unique.
It is, I’d say, urban fantasy, set in a black community, which turns out to be a kind of religious cult.
The handles topics like racism and LGBTQIA discrimination, as well as other problems we face with society. I liked how the topics were just taken on straight forward, no big philosophical thoughts about it, but also not taken as a given. The main character just deals with what she has, and especially her attitude of “just keep going with what you can’t change” while also never giving in to others expectations really worked well for me.
Contrasting living utterly wild in the woods, where she birthed twins all alone with coming back out to the “real world” was quite the reality check, and made for fascinating reading. I almost forgot this was not a fantasy world for a while, and then there’s bikes and phones and trucks and I loved how it shook up my thinking.
