The Chosen One by Carol Lynch Williams
Release Date: May 12, 2009
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin
Age Group: Young Adult
Pages: 192
Thirteen-year-old Kyra has grown up in an isolated polygamous community without questioning her father’s three wives and her twenty brothers and sisters. Or at least without questioning them much—if you don’t count her secret visits to the Mobile Library on Wheels to read forbidden books, or her meetings with the boy she hopes to choose for herself instead of having a man chosen for her. But when the Prophet decrees that Kyra must marry her 60-year-old uncle—who already has six wives—Kyra must make a desperate choice in the face of violence and her own fears of losing her family.
This novel was nothing short of spectacular. This is a very intense topic and I was glad to see it represented in a young adult novel. I was enraged, disgusted, and saddened by this novel.
Told from Kyra’s point of view, this novel unfolds a story of desperation, love, fear, and freedom. Kyra’s internal struggle was masterfully depicted. I never once questioned her desire to stay. Why would you not? To leave your family and everything you have come to know. I only hope that I would posses that type of courage, that she must have had to posses in order to leave.
Williams seamlessly balanced Kyra’s world. At one end of the spectrum Kyra’s family is full of love, from her father and her many mothers, sharing many of the same qualities, you’d expect from any family, polygamous or not. And yet the other end contains the darker side, the killing of defective babies, beating, and tortuous discipline. It’s almost impossible not to become emotionally invested in this story.
There was one aspect that bothered me, and it had to do with the cell phone. And perhaps it was just me, but for as completely forbidden everything from the outside world was, I find it very hard to believe that Kyra could operate a cell phone with such ease. But despite that small complaint, I don’t feel that it took away from the story.
Overall, all the hype had it right:
“Compelling”
“powerful”
“a masterpiece”
“an important book”