MEADOWLARK

When an email from a childhood friend invites photographer Simone to document life at a commune, little does she know she’s stepping into Waco-level drama.

Simone understands life on a commune; after all, she and her mother moved to one when Simone was 4. She was called Simrin there at Ananda Nagar, an ashram in the California desert. Twenty years later, Simrin is now Simone, a rising star in the photography world, with a blog showcasing her talents in capturing difficult, dramatic moments. Simone’s daughter, Quinn, has inherited her synesthesia, which her ex-husband finds weird. He’s pushing Simone to enroll Quinn in a conventional kindergarten. And that’s when Arjun contacts her. Now he calls himself Aaron, and he has a wife and three children, and he’s founded a new commune called Meadowlark, where every child can find their gifts. But a disgruntled former member has accused the ashram of harboring child abusers, and Aaron needs Simone’s help to show the world the real Meadowlark. Once there, however, Simone discovers that things are far more complex and dangerous than she thought. Aaron’s wife, who has secrets of her own, is adamantly opposed to having her children photographed. Juniper, Aaron’s eldest child, becomes jealous of Quinn’s talent. And Aaron’s own motives seem less than altruistic, especially as the police begin to push him to open the gates. In this, her sophomore novel, Abrams (Playing, 2017) gorgeously depicts the spellbinding world of closed communities, in which being noticed as special means everything. From the starkly beautiful desert landscapes that mirror the children’s thirst for attention to the brightly colored lines and shapes that Simone and Quinn see linking them to those they love, Abrams deftly conjures a highly charged emotional terrain.

A compelling, taut portrait of love and broken promises.