Since leaving the intentional community run by her father in rural Florida, Catharine West has built herself a life from scratch in New York City. She has a successful copy-writing career, visits the public library at least once a week, runs daily & enjoys a snarky friendship over drinks with the disarming Stella, who says of Catharine’s library habit, “You do realize this isn’t actually a Nora Ephron film.” She doesn’t date much, which Stella attributes to a bad breakup or fear of change. Catharine holds people at arm’s length, privately enforcing upon herself some of the same obsessive standards she learned back at the farm, including extreme fasting and self-deprivation. She has shared her past with no one, which is why it’s so alarming when a journalist e-mails out of the blue with questions about “a little-known, now-defunct cult in central Florida.” Catharine’s carefully crafted, tightly controlled existence is threatened. But in balance with that risk hangs the chance that she might recover the one part of her past that she never meant to lose: her sister.
