The burning season A novel

Rosemary lives in Dawes, Texas, a small town run almost entirely by her church. Her husband, Paul, brought her there a few years before in a bid to save their marriage. This cult-like church requires women to sit apart from their husbands and only speak when spoken to, wearing long, antiquated dresses that don't show their skin. "Holy fires" burn from time to time, destroying houses and displacing members of the church. Rosemary has always felt like an outcast within the group--she came only to stay with the man she fell in love with before they came to Dawes. But when Paul begins a crusade to get her pregnant, the pressure to become a mother leaves Rosemary to endure bizarre, controlling rituals from church leadership. As Rosemary navigates her conflicting feelings, one question burns as hot as the town's fires: will she escape? This masterful novel combines readable, lyrical prose with a compelling plot and complex characters. Rosemary herself is a puzzle box, at times seeming apathetic about her situation and other times heroically passionate. Wisdom (We Can Only Save Ourselves, 2021) weaves these tangled threads with overarching themes of how the patriarchy controls women's minds and bodies. Highly recommended.

Faith, guilt, and sacrifice play into the quietly distressing latest from Wisdom (We Can Only Save Ourselves). Rosemary, 32, deals with her stifling new life in tiny Dawes, Tex. She moved there with her husband, Paul, two years earlier to join an ultraconservative Christian sect run by Papa Jake. Rosemary agreed to the plan after she was caught cheating, and now she fudges her fertility tracking to avoid getting pregnant. At their church, women are forbidden from speaking to men, nor are they allowed to use phones or cars. Lately, church member's homes have been burning down--a sign of God's will, according to Papa Jake. Then, after Rosemary finds fellow member Julie's baby, Lily, tied up in her crib, Papa Jake exiles Julie and gives Lily to Paul and Rosemary to raise. The plot thickens as Rosemary contends with her new role as a mother as well as the arrival of a stranger in town, all of which makes her question her faith, and meanwhile the townspeople's animosity toward the church escalates into vandalism. Though the truth about the fires comes a bit too quickly, the tension between Paul's well-meaning gentleness and harrowing methods of control frame a nuanced, chilling picture of religious devotion. Wisdom turns this into an entrancing conflagration. (July)