Ratings

Content Ratings based on a 0-5 scale where
0 = no objectionable content and
5 = an excessive or disturbing level of content

Guide to Rating System

LANGUAGE

VIOLENCE

SEXUAL CONTENT

ADULT THEMES

Ratings Explanation

Language:  A handful of common swear words.

Violence:  Men and women that were not compliant to the prophet and apostle’s wishes were beaten severely.  Beatings were also used to bring women into submission.  They were then paraded down the main road to be an example and warning to others.  A woman was shot and killed after being accused of adultery.  An outsider is killed for trying to help a teenage girl escape the compound.  Kyra imagines killing the prophet and leaving his body for the termites to devour.  A premature baby is taken from it’s mother and killed because it was impure.

Sexual Content:  Kyra falls in love with Joshua.  They meet in secret at night in the shadows.   They enjoy hugging and kissing and being close to one another.  Young teenage girls are being saved for the older men to marry.  Women are told they must have babies in order to go to heaven.  Being with a man is not to be discussed but is an essential part of marriage. Kyra’s older uncle tries to force her to kiss him before they are officially married.

Adult Content:  The Chosen are a polygamist colony that have recently closed their gates to the outside world.  They believe a man must have at least 3 wives to qualify for heaven.  Marriages are arranged by their prophet, who receives revelation in making the matches.  Wives and children can be taken from one man and given to another if the prophet finds him unfit.  The prophet has told his people that all outsiders follow Satan.  They are told to stay away from them.  Kyra’s mother goes into premature labor after seeing her beaten.  The baby is born, takes only a few breaths and dies.

Synopsis

Kyra is a thirteen-year-old girl who lives with her father, three mothers and twenty brothers and sisters.  She is a member of a polygamist family living in an isolated compound in the middle of a desert.  The prophet has promised to protect them from the evil of the outside world.   The compound is all Kyra has ever known except for her weekly visits to the county’s mobile library that passes just outside the gates.  Kyra has another secret.  She likes a boy named Joshua , a lot.  She even starts to meet him in secret, which is against the rules.  Kyra hopes that she will be able to choose him as a match for herself instead of having a man chosen for her.  Her plans are upset when the prophet receives revelation that Kyra is to marry her sixty-year-old uncle who already has six wives.  The young girl starts to doubt what she has been taught.  Now she must choose to be obedient or go against everything she has always known, risking her own family’s safety, to follow her heart.

A heart-wrenching story of life on the other side of the fence.   The reader is taken on an emotional journey through Kyra’s eyes into an unsettling and eccentric life that outsiders can only imagine.  I realize that this story is not typical of all polygamist families but it does cause one to reflect on the safety and freedom of those, especially children, that subscribe to this type of lifestyle.  A thought provoking book for the more mature reader.