Taking a story ripped from the headlines, Williams looks inside a polygamist cult and the dangers it poses for one girl. Kyra and her father, three mothers, and 20 siblings live in an isolated community under the thumb of a prophet, who controls every aspect of his apostles' lives. The most shocking intrusion of all comes when the prophet decrees that Kyra is to become the wife of her 60-year-old uncle. A secret patron of a local mobile library, Kyra knows there's a world away from the compound she might escape to, but first she pins her hopes on her father's ability to change the prophet's mind. Instead, her family is threatened, and the stakes for her refusal to marry are raised. The clandestine relationship Kyra is having with one of the compound's teenage boys is a romance more convenient than convincing (everyone is carefully watched except this duo, it seems). Contrivances notwithstanding, this is a heart pounder, and readers will be held, especially as the danger escalates. Williams' portrayals of the family are sharp, but what's most interesting about this book is how the yearnings and fears of a character so far from what most YAs know will still seem familiar and close.--Cooper, Ilene Copyright 2009 Booklist

Intensely gripping and grippingly intense, the story begins with a gasp when Prophet Childs, the leader of a sect called The Chosen Ones, comes to visit the almost14-year-old Kyra Leigh Carlson and her family to impart the "joyous news" that she's to become the seventh wife of her father's brother, a much older church apostle. Kyra, who lives with her father, three mothers and 21 brothers and sisters in a closely guarded, hyper-religious, polygamous compound, is horrified. The prohibited books she surreptitiously reads have opened her eyes to the wider world, and she has been hoping to marry a young sect member who's been secretly courting her. The forced marriage brings with it more than a whiff of child rape, though Williams unnecessarily pushes every button by also depicting the church hierarchy as murderers who use their religiosity to sadistically control and humiliate their parishioners. Nonetheless, Kyra's terrible dilemmaescaping her fate means betraying her familyis heartbreakingly real, and the final scenes are riveting and suspenseful. (Fiction. 12 up) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Williams strikes just the right balance between informative and cautionary in this gripping tale about a 13-year-old girl trapped in a polygamist cult. At first, Kyra's struggles center around her situation-a lack of privacy, too many mothers and the urge to experiment with various sins (reading books besides scripture, exploring outside the compound, kissing a boy). But when she's "chosen" to be the seventh wife of her brutish, 60-something uncle, Kyra's desperation to be somewhere (or someone) else escalates ("God has given you to me, Kyra Leigh," her uncle tells her. "You will do what He says. What the Prophet says. What I say"). Is she brave enough to run away from the community that has sheltered her since birth? Although the ending verges on the sensational, Williams (Pretty Like Us) takes such care in crafting Kyra's internal struggles-and her hellacious story-that the ensuing drama rings true. Williams's highlighting all aspects of cult membership (fear of leaving, desire to belong, guilt about sinning), rather than relying on one-sided generalizations (cults are bad), makes this a prudent and powerful read. Ages 12-up. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

(Middle School) Thirteen-year-old Kyra is one of the Chosen Ones. She was raised to be obedient to her father, her many mothers, the community Apostles, and above all God's will as interpreted by Prophet Childs. But when the Prophet tells Kyra that God has decided she must wed her sixty-year-old uncle, she begins to imagine a life outside the confines of her secluded community. The immediacy of Kyra's first-person perspective heightens her story's emotional impact and will help readers gain insight into her struggles. "My nose is stopped up. My heart is broken. How did I wind up here? How did we all wind up here?" Kyra vacillates between lamenting her sins (she shares secret kisses with Joshua, the boy she would choose to marry if she could; she reads forbidden books, novels like Homecoming and The Borrowers) and planning a way to escape her forced marriage. Kyra knows that her rebellion could cost her family everything; she endures heartache, violence, and dashed hopes with the strength of a child who has been forced to become an adult too quickly. Within a fast-moving story, Williams creates sympathetic characters, and readers will hold their breath right to the end, hoping that Kyra wins her freedom. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

THE footage was eerie: dozens of girls in 19th-century prairie dresses, escorted by state troopers toward buses that would carry them off to an unfamiliar world. More than 400 children were temporarily removed from the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Eldorado, Tex., in April 2008. Their lives, once hidden within the compound of the breakaway Mormon sect, were suddenly the stuff of national news. Courts are still untangling the disturbing allegations - were girls as young as 12 forced to marry middle-aged men? - but the questions that cut deepest, about society's laws versus religious freedom, for example, are even harder to answer. Fiction can offer emotional truth where other tools fail, and that's what makes these two young adult novels - "The Chosen One," by Carol Lynch Williams, and "Alis," by Naomi Rich - so interesting. Both feature young women chafing against strict religious societies. Each protagonist is betrothed, against her will, to a much older man. And each book runs on the same engine of narrative tension: the heroine's decision to gatecrash her way into mainstream society, leaving everything behind. At their best the atmospherics of these novels recall Margaret Atwood's powerful dystopia "The Handmaid's Tale," which has become a staple of high school reading lists. But they are also resonant because they magnify a leitmotif of adolescence: the struggle for self and independence. " 'If I was going to kill the Prophet,' I say, not even keeping my voice low, 'I'd do it in Africa.' " That arrestingly offbeat meditation is the opening line of "The Chosen One" and our first introduction to Kyra, 13, who lives on a religious compound in the middle of a desert. Kyra feels guilty about many things: her fantasy of killing Prophet Childs and letting termites chew away the evidence; her habit of hiding in a tree behind her family's trailer to read forbidden books like "Bridge to Terabithia"; her crush on Joshua Johnson, the blue-eyed boy who asks her for piano lessons. But Kyra is soon faced with bigger worries. Prophet Childs declares that she must become the seventh wife of her cruel 60-year-old uncle, Apostle Hyrum. She's horrified. Should she marry him, sacrificing her freedom and happiness for her family's good name? Or should she escape, leaving behind 20 beloved siblings, three mothers and her gentle father? Williams, herself a Mormon, unveils life among the Chosen (a fictitious theocracy) with spare, evocative writing and an honest sense of character that helps bridge the rift between Kyra's world and ours. In one scene her family takes her off the compound to buy fabric for her wedding dress, and they stop for lunch at Applebee's. Everyone gawks at them, and readers, most of us at least, are likely to be jolted by recognizing ourselves among the gawkers. On occasion, Williams stretches plausibility. (Could Kyra's furtive visits to a mobile library, where it stops just outside the compound, escape notice where every soul is under lock and key?) But thankfully, the nuanced ending - Kyra is free, but freedom isn't easy - feels just right. "Alis" is a fast-paced tale about a similar struggle, but its setting in an alternate time and place - an Olde England of sorts, with cobbled streets and horsedrawn carriages - robs emotional leverage from the plot. Alis, 14 years old, lives in a theocratic community, Freeborne, and has been ordered to marry a 40-year-old preacher. She dreams of escaping to "the city," where her older brother is rumored to have taken refuge years ago. But both Freeborne and the city are alien to the reader, so the contrasts that made "The Chosen One" potent are absent here. This story has other strengths, however, that make it hard to put down. Alis finally reaches the city, but it's not the sanctuary she imagined - her brother, Joel, turns out to be the leader of a gang of petty thieves. Unprepared for the violence and tumult of their lives, Alis returns to Freeborne and her fate as a child bride. But her betrothed, Minister Galin, turns out to be a decent man, and when Alis leaves Freeborne again, it's on her own terms, and with a suitor she chooses. Alis and Kyra are both recognizable teenagers. But the cinematic drama of their lives, not to mention the fact that they'd both feel at home in "The Crucible," is a means to reach a quieter truth, revealing that moment in childhood when you recognize your thoughts as your own and discover forces in the world that your parents cannot - or will not - protect you from. That moment brings freedom, but not without a cost. Jessica Bruder teaches journalism at Columbia University and is the author of "Burning Book: A Visual History of Burning Man."

Gr 7 Up-In this thriller, 13-year-old Kyra lives in an isolated polygamist cult. Life in the compound is as dry as the surrounding desert, more confining than the chain-link fence on its perimeter. But Kyra finds small freedoms despite the tightly controlled communal environment and is able to slip outside to wander the desert. There she chances upon a friendly book-mobile driver who opens the world of children's literature to her. Kyra even begins a flirtation with her classmate, Joshua, a dangerous sin for which they will both pay dearly. The brutal leader, Prophet Childs, has plans for Kyra and will brook no disobedience. He assigns her to be the seventh wife of her own 60-year-old uncle. Repelled, she resists. She and Joshua are badly beaten and she is told that other young people have been killed for taking a similarly defiant stand. Kyra's loving father is powerless to help her and counsels her to accept her fate, but she cannot. The story ends in a high-speed chase with the Prophet's goons gunning for her as she improbably races toward freedom in the blood-spattered book mobile. Has the friendly driver been killed on her account? Is anyone looking for him? What retribution will be taken on her family and what kind of a life lies ahead for her? These unsettling questions are not addressed, but these omissions do not diminish the relief of her successful escape. For a more layered examination of the internal as well as external struggles of a young teen coming of age in a polygamist community, see Shelley Hrdlitschka's Sister Wife (Orca, 2008).-Carolyn Lehman, Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.