Gather the Daughters: A Novel

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Mrs. Balthazar is quite old—nearing forty—and her granddaughter is only a little younger than Amanda. Because her husband has remained a useful carver, she has been allowed to stay alive along with him. (c) Women who produce more than three “defectives” are dismissed to make way for second wives. After becoming grandparents, usually in their late 30s or early 40s, people “drink the last draught”, to free jobs and houses for the coming generations. In Gather the Daughters, this island is no ordinary island, and these girls live no ordinary lifestyle. Cut off from the mainland (which they’ve been told has burned to the ground, riddled with disease, sin and destruction, never to be habitable again) they live in a dystopian world without realizing that they really don’t. The “ancestors” brought their people here as an escape, away from the laws and customs of the mainland, and built their own commandments (the Shalt-Nots) and customs for the people to abide by – customs which include no access to outside books or knowledge, a social hierarchy where men reign supreme and women are subservient in every possible way, and a land where fathers have a special relationship with their daughters… The novel is set on an island just out of reach of the apocalyptic mainland-America. There, a community of fundamental families live in a stagnant, almost dreamy coexistence. They worship their ancestors, they ration the knowledge they disclose to one another, and only the Wanderers, male descendants of the original settlers, are allowed to leave the island and cross into the Wastelands.

Gather the Daughters shares a genetic code with Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale."-- New York Times Book ReviewBorn leader Janey Solomon steps up to seek the truth. At seventeen years old, Janey is so unwilling to become a woman, she is slowly starving herself to death. Trying urgently now to unravel the mysteries of the island and what lies beyond, before her own demise, she attempts to lead an uprising of the girls that may be their undoing.

My whole life, I’ve learned to not question things. It doesn’t do any good, really. You usually learn what you didn’t want to learn, and still don’t know what you wanted to know.” A sigh. “I mean, knowing things, it can really hurt.” Jennie Melamed’s debut, Gather the Daughters, is set on a small isolated island. A tiny handful of families live there, huddled against the elements and against the Wastelands. All the children on the island know is that this is the only place they can live. And, they suspect, there is something terribly wrong with it. When girls undergo the summer of Fruition they are married off and expected to have children. Women who’ve had two children kill themselves so others can take their place. The world turns and, slowly, surely, turns in on itself. She takes off running nowhere in particular, flailing her arms wildly in the dark and laughing louder than she would dare scream at home. It’s summer, and the quilt is hers, the lavish rain is hers, the brimming joyous night is hers. And there are many more days and nights to come. (c)

Gather the Daughters

a young woman goes into surgery for routine brain surgery. In the days following her operation, she begins to hear another voice in her head... an unwanted presence which seems to have a will, and a purpose, all of its own – one that will disrupt her life entirely. The only choice left to her is a simple one. Dabney: The slice of humanity you’ve created is one predicated on the evil inherent in man. More specifically, the evil that lurks in (some?) men. What was the genesis for your premise?

Melamed is a masterful writer, and she establishes a hauntingly vivid atmosphere.... This is a haunting work in the spirit of The Handmaid's Tale--but Melamed more than holds her own. Hopefully, her debut is a harbinger of more to come. Fearsome, vivid, and raw: Melamed's work describes a world of indoctrination and revolt." This felt forced a bit. Disturbing and disconnected as well. Multiple protagonists, living oh-so-different and at the same time similar lives. A paedophile commumnity, a sect, an apocalypsis afthermath... The world of something else sprinkled with a healthy dose of Margo Atwood. The ancestors see everything, everywhere on the island,” says Our Book, and for a time in her childhood Vanessa felt like she was defecating for an audience of thoughtful ancestors. (c) Caitlin thinks of another island, perhaps with a similar church, perhaps with a red-haired girl admonishing the others at midnight. The girls won over my heart completely. They have little control over their lives or bodies, but the cult can't control every aspect of their thoughts. Some of them are more rebellious than others, but even those that are reluctant to challenge the system still find their own quiet ways to rebel. In one touching chapter, the girls imagined the types of islands that might be out there. Their visions reflected what bothered them most about their society. There are four girls we get to spend the most time with:Gather the Daughters is a haunting tale of a society where women are controlled but children are free, and a young woman on the cusp of that transition discovers something that pulls her ideological foundations out from under her. It’s perhaps not for the faint of heart, but will definitely appeal to fans of engrossing dystopian fiction that lingers in the memory. What if there aren’t any men at all?” says Wendy. “Then there’d be no babies,” answers another voice. “What if,” says Lana Aaron, who is only six but more alert than her shrieking, tumbling counterparts, “what if the children are head of the family, and the parents have to do what they say?”