A Utah woman is stalked by sexual predators and personal demons. Six-year-old Allison and best friend Cindy are playing by a woodland creek near their insular Mormon town when a bearded man threatens them with a rifle and kidnaps Cindy, whose body is never found. A year later, the bearded man reappears at a church picnic, but only a cursory investigation is ever conducted into Cindy's disappearance. When Allison is fifteen, her mother, pregnant against doctor's orders with her sixth child, dies while giving birth to a stillborn infant. Her father has always singled Allison out for the harshest discipline, and his abuse escalates after he remarries, resulting in an even more toxic-blended family. Allison has long questioned the tenets of the Mormon Church, especially its subjugation of women (even in the afterlife) and entrenched patriarchy, and when she finally escapes to the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, her early trauma continues to haunt her as she experiments with promiscuity and drinking. Then, returning to her apartment after a late-night drive, Allison is raped by an assailant wearing a fake beard, whom she suspects with horror to be her brother-in-law Mark, a "returned missionary." Allison is helped by two Salt Lake police officers (and one state trooper) in her effort to apprehend the rapist, who continues to stalk her. The action surges forward at a pulse-quickening pace as clues about Mark's past emerge: that he has a history as a child molester, was actually decommissioned as a missionary, and shows signs of more than a random fixation on Allison. More shocking still is how far church officials will go to condone and cover up his crimes. Though many readers will guess the story's big revelation long before it comes, it's a white-knuckles ride all the way. Expert depiction of a young woman's struggle with the oppressive "family values" of one kind of fundamentalism. Newcomer Collins is a talent to watch. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.