Berie is caught between what her mother wants and what she wants. Her mother wants her to go to college, to make a better life for herself in a fancy office somewhere. But Berie doesn’t want to go to college. She wants to live a life of purpose, close to the earth, where she can feel free. But she can’t figure out how to make her mother understand that. So after flying off to college, Berie couldn’t find it in herself to register. Instead, she goes to the bus station to go back home. And that’s where she meets Bay.

Bay tells her about his family. But it’s not his birth family, it’s a family he’s chosen. She’s welcome to visit, and she can stay 3 days or forever.

Berie gets there, and finds out it’s a farm in the mountains of Appalachia. There are sheep and cows and chicken, people living honestly off the land. They grow their own food and make their own soap, and after dinner they sing or sometimes Dash will tell stories. They all work very hard, but it’s genuine and pure. Berie decides she wants to stay. She has always felt close to nature, and Dash talks about saving the planet. The family is there to help save the planet. It’s all Berie ever wanted.

Dash renames her Harmony, and little by little, she figures out how to live there, as part of the Ash Family. Harmony works with the sheep, helps with the cooking, starts to make friends. She adores Dash and his passion for the earth. The family starts talking about taking action, and Harmony wants to help. But when another young woman shows up at the farm for her 3-day trial, Harmony finds out it’s someone from her hometown and they actually have friends in common. This new woman doesn’t stay at the farm, and Harmony begins to worry that her slip-up, the way she talked about her past to this stranger, could bring problems for the family.

As the weeks go by, Harmony becomes more and more entrenched in the Ash Family. But her friends and family at home want more for her, and they try to make contact to get her back home. Harmony must decide what it is she really wants, if she wants to stay part of an isolated family or move back to her family of origin. It’s a decision that could cost her everything.

The Ash Family is the story of a woman slowly indoctrinated into a small environmental cult. If you’ve very wondered how someone can choose to join a group where they are expected to behave and believe like everyone else, then this novel by Molly Dektar is a must-read. It’s hard to read, as it’s an innocent young woman making choices to live a very difficult life with a very controlling man, but it’s also important as a way to understand how this subtle mind control can take over.

I listened to the audio book for this one, and narrator Emily Woo Zeller beautifully embodies the voice of Berie/Harmony as she struggles to figure out what’s most important to her and how she wants to live.

The Ash Family isn’t a perfect story to me. I was a little disappointed in the ending, as there was some ambiguity of what happens to some of the characters, and I wish that Berie had asserted herself more in the end, but there was a lot to like in this novel too. As I said, it’s not the easiest book to read, but it has a lot in it that is important in understanding how we choose what to believe in and how to live.

Galleys for The Ash Family were provided by Simon & Schuster through NetGalley, with many thanks, but I bought the audio book myself through Audible.