A classic bestseller that's been in print for over 20 years, this gripping YA thriller follows a teenage girl caught in a religious cult.
Imagine that your mother tells you she's going away. She is going to leave you with relatives you've never heard of - and they are members of a strict religious cult. Your name is changed, and you are forced to follow the severe set of social standards set by the cult. There is no television, no radio, no newspaper. No mirrors. You must wear long, modest clothes. You don't know where your mother is, and you are beginning to question your own identity.
I am not Esther is a gripping psychological thriller written by New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards-winning children's writer Fleur Beale. In Esther she creates an enthralling and utterly compelling portrait of a teenager going through her worst nightmare.
Awards
Shortlisted for the Senior Fiction section of the 1999 New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards
Honour Award in the 1999 NZ Post Children's Book Awards
Gaelyn Gordon Storylines award for a much loved book
Behind The Book…
A boy my husband taught wanted to be a doctor, but the religion his family belonged to believed education was evil as it exposed the mind to worldly influences that would lead you to hell. The boy managed to complete four years at high school but his father refused to let him do a final year. The boy argued with his father about it ending with the father throwing his son from the house and telling him he was now dead to his family. He went to his mate whose family gave him a home. He did become a doctor.
That story stayed in my head for about fifteen years. When I decided the time had come to use what had happened to him as the idea for a story I contacted him to ask permission and he was fine with it. But I didn’t want to write his story and instead I wrote about a 14 year old girl called Kirby who is sent to live with strictly religious relatives.
It took me six weeks of the summer holidays to work out why Kirby’s loving mother would make her live with the religious relatives she’d never told Kirby about. I had no intention of writing a sequel. Another fifteen or so years went by and I didn’t know what to write. I often find it difficult to get the initial idea that will kick off a story so I was a bit grumpy.
In the end, my commissioning editor at Random House said, ‘Well, what are you interested in?’ I said, ‘I’ve always wondered what happened to Rachel and Rebecca.’ They are the twins in the family Kirby is sent to live with. That’s how I came to write I am Rebecca. Then I wanted to find out what happened to Magdalene and the only way to do that was to write Being Magdalene.
- Fleur Beale
Reviews For I Am Not Esther
Wellington's Beale is one of the most consistently accomplished and versatile writers for teenagers in the country.
- New Zealand Listener
Sort of a Handmaid's Tale for the junior high set, New Zealander Beale's engrossing novel peers into the restricted world of the Children of the Faith, a rigidly traditional (and fictional) Christian sect. Resourceful Kirby has never known any family aside from her impractical mother, Ellen. When Ellen abruptly makes plans to fulfill her lifelong dream of working with refugees in Africa, she sends Kirby to her long-estranged brother, the strict and pious Caleb, and his wife and children. Renamed Esther ("The women of our faith all have biblical names. As do the men," explains soberly clad Aunt Naomi), Kirby chafes at the restrictions forced on her by her newfound kin: they dictate her style of dress and hair, forbid slang and even contractions, and resolutely discourage any ambitions aside from an early marriage and plenty of children. Angry and confused though she is, Kirby becomes attached to her newfound cousins, in particular the vulnerable five-year-old Maggie (Magdalene) and teenage Daniel, who is himself struggling to reconcile his interest in becoming a doctor with the community's mores. Though several plot twists seem to exist mostly to serve the novel's decidedly anti-fundamentalist stance (only dissenter Kirby, for example, has the courage to defy her uncle and get her ailing pregnant aunt the help she needs), this tale still has more than enough power to chill.
- US Publishers Weekly
This is a disturbing tale about a girl put into a completely new environment and how she deals with it. Beale's writing is excellent...I had a difficult time putting this one down.
- Kathy Brummond, BookReview.com
Kirby, 14, comes home from school to find her usually good-natured "dizzy flake" of a mom crying. The mystery deepens when her mother announces her intention to leave New Zealand almost immediately to work as a nurse in Africa, and ships the teen off to live with an uncle she's never met. Caleb and his family are members of a sect called the Fellowship of the Children of the Faith, and their house has no mirrors, no TV, no radio, no newspapers, and virtually nothing to read but the Bible. Her uncle renames her "Esther" and though she is by turns feisty and irreverent, she quickly learns that everyone suffers when she breaks the rules because discipline consists mostly of grueling prayer sessions that all family members are required to attend. Beginning to find her place among the six siblings, Kirby cannot understand why no one will talk about another sister, Miriam, who died just four weeks earlier. She enjoys increasingly unguarded conversations with her cousin Daniel, who secretly wishes to continue his education and become a doctor, but is horrified by the rigidity and brutality of this male-dominated fundamentalist society. The author builds tension well, introducing layers of conflict, revealing elements of the plot realistically and plausibly. The climax shocks and the resolution feels right. While understanding the comfort and peace that some believers feel, in the end it is clear to Kirby that such strict beliefs limit people, dictating too much of what can't be done instead of allowing personal initiative and creativity to flourish.
- US School Library Journal
Fleur Beale is a great author, as if you yourself were experiencing the life changing adventure.
- Evelyn Barber (Age 13), Hooked On Books