Review 30: The Ash Family

The Ash Family by Molly Dektar
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

How much would you sacrifice for what you believed in?

Berie knew college wasn't for her, but her mother and ex-boyfriend thought she needed to go. At the airport, after Berie's mother drops her off, she walks away, spends her last dollar taking a bus leaving. Berie doesn't know what she wants or where to go, only that she wants to help heal the dying environment. It is fate that Bay chose her to go with him, to live with the Ash Family. To live for the new earth that will come. When Berie gets into Bay's car she goes with nothing, her clothes and suitcases left on the bus, and no one knows where in the Appalachian woods they end up.

I wanted to like this book, well, I did, somewhat, but I didn't love it. Berie is told, like all newcomers, you can stay for three days or the rest of your life. Berie is renamed Harmony. Everyone in the Ash Family leaves their fake-world names behind.

The Ash Family is like a cult, but instead of religion you have fervent belief in the dying earth and desire to save it for humans; to become something else, a hive, interconnected. The leader Dice says he doesn't make the rules, and you don't have to do anything you don't want to, but people do what he says. They even believe Dice, the father, leader, can make miracles such as changing the weather. Like all cults there are strict rules, and usually they don't apply to Dice, such as not using fake-world soap and infrequent washings.

Dice picks little bits about the world that doesn't work, that is so out of whack with nature, that it is easy to believe him. The family is learning a new way to live with the earth, and it looks very similar to how we lived in the past, with farming and planting on small scales, to sustain the 20-odd people.

Harmony easily lets the three days go by, so she assumes that she will stay the rest of her life. But throughout the book she questions staying, or leaving, and alternates towards being certain this is the place for her. It is confusing. Berie/Harmony is a confusing character. We know she cares about the environment, was a vegetarian upon arrival, yet eats a slice of meat the first time it is offered to her without even saying anything. She is not in harmony, she is uncertain about everything. And there is part of the problem with the book. We want to like the narrator but I didn't. I couldn't understand her motives, why she would stay or want to go. And the ending was unresolved, not a strong ending at all.

Overall the book is okay, but ultimately disappointing to me. Did Berie learn, grow, become her own person? I'm not sure.


Thanks to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for an uncorrected electronic advance review copy of this book.