Chosen

by Lesley Glaister (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2011

  $3.46

  The last time Dodie sees her mother, Stella is unusually restless and spruced-up in a red velvet dress. Soon after this, Dodie's younger brother Seth disappears. Desperate to find him, Dodie leaves her young son with his father and follows Seth's trail to the Soul Life Centre: a peculiar, enclosed community in upstate New York, presided over by a messianic figure called 'Our Father'. Trying to gain access to Seth, she joins the Brothers and Sisters in their communal living, meditation, fasting and chanting. As her son arrives at the centre with his father, Dodie finds her family dangerously entangled in their rituals. Thirty years earlier, reeling from their mother's death, two teenage sisters are starting their new life alone. When their end-of-school party is gate-crashed by an older crowd, they meet Bogart, a good-looking hippy with a honeyed voice and magnetic energy.And so begins their unconventional new family life. As these two stories reverberate, a series of surprising connections is revealed in a shocking and exhilarating conclusion.

• Used

  Paperback
  2010

  $3.46

  The last time Dodie sees her mother alive, Stella is unusually busy, tattily splendid in an old red velvet dress. Soon after this, Dodie's brother Seth goes missing: the only trace of him is through postcards signed 'Yours in the Lord' addresses from the Soul Life Centre, New York state. When Stella hangs herself, Dodie must leave her baby Jake at home and cross the Atlantic to bring Seth beck from the mysterious Soul Life Centre. But when she arrives, Seth is always one day away from seeing her. She becomes drawn - not always willingly - into the Brothers and Sisters' communal living, meditation, fasting and chanting. Until baby Jake unexpectedly arrives at Soul Life and events take a shocking turn for Dodie. In a parallel narrative, Stella's sister Melanie tells the story of their teenage years in the 1970s and their shared affair with Bogart, a messianic hippy with shrewd ambition. These two compelling stories collide in a series of shocking revelations and an exhilarating conclusion. Heartfelt and frightening, Chosen is Lesley Glaister at the top of her game.