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by Rebecca Wait
Judith has been visiting her mother, Stephanie, in prison once a month for the last eight years. She still can't bring herself to talk with her mother about what brought them here―or about Nathaniel, the man whose religious cult almost cost them their lives.
When Stephanie first meets him, she is a struggling single mother and Nathaniel is a charismatic outsider, unlike anyone she's ever known. In deciding to join the group he's founded, Stephanie thinks she's doing the best thing for her daughter: a new home, a new purpose. Judith and Stephanie are initiated into a secret society whose "followers" must obey the will of a zealous prophet. As Stephanie immerses herself in her new life, Judith slowly realizes the moral implications of the strict lifestyle Nathaniel preaches. Tensions deepen, faith and doubt collide, and a horrifying act of violence changes everything. In the shattering aftermath, it seems that no one is safe.
With "propulsive plotting" (The Guardian), The Followers is a novel about love, hope, and identity that asks: are we still responsible for our actions if we remake ourselves in someone else's image? And can there be a way back?
"...readers will be drawn in by Wait's unfolding of events." —Booklist
"The novel has a brooding tension that threatens no good to come, building to a page-turning finish." —Daily Mail
"A profoundly unsettling, brilliantly executed, and deeply humane depiction of a slow slide toward an unspeakable act, and the difficulty and necessity of finding a way to live in the aftermath. The Followers is a remarkable novel." —Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven
"Rebecca Wait describes the world of The Followers with such vividness that I dreamt about her cold, misty moorland, and with such tenderness that the ending brought tears to my eyes." —Alison Moore, Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Lighthouse
This information about The Followers was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Rebecca Wait is the author of The View on the Way Down. She studied English at Oxford University, where she specialized in Old English Poetry. She lives and teaches in London.
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