SuitabookFreedom and control
Alice leaves a home governed by rules and punishments, hoping that the Abode of Love will provide freedom, but the new setting may be more restrictive.
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Book details
Alison Rattle - Author
This is a dark historical escape narrative: Alice seeks freedom from family control, but her new community’s leader may impose a different form of entrapment. Its shifting viewpoints broaden the story beyond Alice’s experience.
Alice Angel has known only a life of rules, restriction and punishments that are inevitably doled out as she strays from the rigid path of Victorian proprietary that her mother has set out for her. A constant disappointment to all but her beloved father, she longs for the day that she might break free from the stifling atmosphere of her mother's rule. After a chance encounter with a charming stranger, and a final incident with her family which sees her condemned to the madhouse, Alice sees her opportunity to run and grasps it with both hands. She escapes to join the Agapemonites in their Abode of Love, where ex-Reverend Henry Prince rules his isolated colony of women as their Beloved. Prince ignites a passion in Alice that she never knew existed, and she dares to think she might be free at last. But as Alice becomes more deeply drawn into the life of Prince's strange religious sect, secrets are revealed that seem to hint at a darker nature lurking behind the man's charm. Alice could be more trapped, alone and in danger than ever before ...
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Sign in for personalised guidanceThis is a dark historical escape narrative: Alice seeks freedom from family control, but her new community’s leader may impose a different form of entrapment. Its shifting viewpoints broaden the story beyond Alice’s experience.
Alice leaves a home governed by rules and punishments, hoping that the Abode of Love will provide freedom, but the new setting may be more restrictive.
Henry Prince leads an isolated community of women, attracting Alice through charm, passion and promises associated with a different life.
Alice is labelled mad, insane or hysterical by her mother, while her own viewpoint presents a more complicated understanding of her experience.
Expect disturbing and alarming material involving harsh family punishment, confinement in a madhouse, coercive authority, isolation, secrecy and possible danger within a religious sect.
This is a grounded book brief while Suitabook strengthens the analysis: some draft conclusions still depend on unresolved evidence.
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