The Grace Year

In the isolated, hyper-patriarchal world of Garner County, everyone believes that sixteen-year-old girls develop a dangerous "magic" — the power to lure men, madden wives, and corrupt the county with their very skin. To burn it off, every girl is banished for her sixteenth "grace year" to a fenced encampment in the wilderness, sent to return purified and ready for marriage. Many never come home.

Tierney James expects the worst from the wild — the brutal weather, the poachers who hunt grace-year girls for the black-market value of their bodies. What she doesn't expect is that the deadliest threat may be the other girls themselves, as fear, superstition, and thwarted power turn the encampment into something savage.

A ferocious feminist dystopia in the tradition of The Handmaid's Tale and Lord of the Flies, The Grace Year is part survival story, part dark fairy tale, and part resistance manifesto — an unflinching look at what a misogynistic world does to the girls it fears.