IMPERFECTIONS

For 14-year-old Rosemary, her little brother, Isaac, and her baby sister, Anne, the Shaker village of Pleasant Hill, Ky., is a clean haven and welcome refuge from their father’s abuse and the violence of the Civil War. It’s also the prison to which their mother has abandoned them. Shakers believe they live in Heaven on earth, where humans must submit to perfect order. Rosemary—now Sister Bess—must sleep on her back, hands folded across her chest; she must always walk with her right foot first and take everything with her right hand. While Isaac’s anxiety leads him to embrace every Shaker rule, Rosemary fights back, making artistic but imperfect brooms and arguing that kittens should be allowed in the barns, narrating her rebellion in a homespun, present-tense voice. Gradually, as she campaigns for her own imperfections, she begins to see the Shakers as individuals, too, all trying to cover the imperfections that are the essence of their humanity; in doing so, she makes peace with her place in the Shaker village and her future outside it. Lovely and thought-provoking. (Historical fiction. 10-15)