A Complicated Kindness

 A Complicated Kindness
by Miriam Toews
Pages: 253
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

In this coming-of-age novel the author balances grief and hope in the witty voice of a teen whose family is falling apart.

Nomi tells the story of how her father and she spend their days together trying to piece together a life after her mother leaves them. To add to her and her father's sadness her older sister, then disappears. Has she left home or has something happened to her. Nomi and her father live in a small rural town founded by Mennonites on the cold, flat plains of Manitoba, Canada.

With dark humor, Nomi tries to make sense of her life as a 16-year-old taking care of her adult father while the rest of the community blame them for their own sadness. Despite everything, Nomi loves her family, all of them and tries to decide if she should stay or leave this oppressive town and if she leaves should she take dad with her?

Women Talking

 Women Talking
by Miriam Toews
Pages: 216
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

This historical fiction in inspired by true events of a real Mennonite community and the author imagines how different women and men in the community may have responded to these events.

One evening, eight Mennonite women climb into a hay loft to conduct a secret meeting. For the past two years, each of these women, and more than a hundred other girls in their colony, has been repeatedly raped during the night. At first the male leadership told them, this was their punishment for their sins but when the women learn that they were actually drugged and violated by a group of men from their own community, they must decide how to respond and how to protect themselves and their daughters from future harm. 

The police from outside the colony have come in and arrested the men and now the men of the colony have decided that they all (including the women and girls who are too young to understand what happened to them) must forgive the rapists and welcome them back into their community. The men set off to the city to raise money for bail and this small group of women meet to decide - should they stay in the only world they have ever known with those who have harmed them, or should they venture out into the unknown and hope for safety there. They ask the only man to remain behind, the school teacher who was a formerly shunned member of their community to record their discussion. 

None of the women can read, write or even speak the language outside of their colony. Can they risk their lives and those of their children to escape their rapists. If not, can they truly forgive not only the rapists but those who are bringing them back into the colony and knowingly putting them in danger again. If they leave what age of male children do they take with them? Is it too late to save their young sons? Have they already been corrupted by the leadership that allowed this to happen in the first place?