NCW Libraries

Jessamine Brady loves her Shaker sisters and brothers, but can't stop imagining life and love in the outside world.

When Elizabeth Duncan feels a strong attachment to a handsome young Believer named Ethan, life gets complicated. Will Elizabeth be forced to leave the Shaker community to keep Ethan from stumbling? Or will Ethan's love for her change their lives forever?

When 15-year-old Polly Kimball sets fire to the family farm, killing her abusive father, she and her young brother find shelter in a Massachusetts Shaker community called the City of Hope. It is the Era of Manifestations, when young Shaker girls all across the Northeast are experiencing mystical visions. The City of Hope had not yet been blessed with a Visionist -- but that changes when Polly arrives and is unexpectedly exalted.

"In 1971, a property speculator named Harley Mann begins recording his life story onto a reel-to-reel machine. Reflecting on his childhood in the early 20th century, Harley recounts that after his father's sudden death, his family migrated down to Florida-mere miles away from what would become Disney World-to join a community of Shakers. Led by Elder John, a generous man with a mysterious past, the colony devoted itself to labor, faith, and charity,...

While searching for her true self and for the way to meet the needs of her personal sense of spirituality, an orphaned teenaged girl joins a Shaker community in mid-nineteenth century New England and learns about a new religion called Mormonism.