Miriam Toews

"In a small, reclusive Mennonite community in the shadow of the Sierra Madre mountains, Irma Voth, eighteen and longing for more than the stifling life offered her by her family, falls in love with a Mexican boy, Jorge, and marries him secretly. Cast out of the house and shunned by her father, they struggle to survive in a Mexico where young men are never far from the seduction and corruption of the drug lords, and Irma's world narrows further when, despite their love for each other, her new husband inexplicably deserts her"--Front jacket flap.

Irma Voth

Jeannette Ordas

The writing is quite beautiful in parts and I think she really captured her characters and the location well. But it's another book that has distinct halves - and I liked the 2nd half more. A quick read and 3.5 stars.

The stifling, reclusive life of nineteen-year-old Irma Voth, recently married and more recently deserted, is turned on its head when a film crew moves in to make a movie about the strict religous community in which she and her family live. She is drawn to the creative passion and warmth of their world but her domineering father is determined to keep her from it at all costs. The confrontation between them sets her on an irrevocable path towards something that feels like freedom as she and her young sister, Aggie, wise beyond her teenage years, flee to the city, upheld only by their love for each other and their smart wit, even as they begin to understand the tragedy that has their family in its grip. Irma Voth delves into the complicated factors that set us on the road to self-discovery and how we can sometimes find the strength to endure the really hard things that happen. It also asks that most difficult of questions: How do we forgive? And most importantly, how do we forgive ourselves?The new novel from Miriam Toews returns to the subject of a Mennonite community, so powerfully rendered in her award-winning, number-one bestseller A Complicated Kindness.

Irma Voth

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