Book of the Week August 20, 2026
How smart people can allow themselves to be lured into a cult and the evils that charismatic men can convince followers to accept are laid bare on the pages of Carson’s psychedelically violent debut, set in the mid 1970s. Faye Sterling is embarrassed to come from big-time money, and when a religious leader known as Dad to his followers offers her the chance at authenticity by joining his group, she jumps at it. Her neglect and fervor force her teenage daughter, Nell, our narrator, from San Francisco to a supposed utopian compound in South America. The Jim Jones parallels are obvious and all too accurate. Dad, “a combination of Revered King, Angela Davis, and Albert Einstein,” just cares so much that he violently abuses his followers, even children, so that they can improve their behavior. Behind closed doors, his sex with Nell and other young women “helps them to detach from the shame that they feel in their bodies.” These abuses, and verbal viciousness including Dad’s repeated use of the n-word, are very much on the page, creating a feeling of hurtling toward disaster. Outside forces loom large in the end—some real, such as Nell’s actual father’s desperation to get her out, some exaggerated by Dad, including his news about the scary, threatening outside world. An absorbing, shocking first from Carson.—Henrietta Thornton
