After her parents die in a car accident, Cameron Post moves to rural Montana to live with her conservative aunt and grandmother. When her secret relationship with her best friend, Coley Taylor, is discovered, her aunt sends her to God’s Promise, a residential conversion therapy camp. The narrative follows Cameron as she navigates the facility’s psychological conditioning and religious rhetoric intended to cure her same-sex attraction. Surrounded by other teenagers undergoing spiritual correction, she struggles to maintain her internal identity against a program designed to dismantle it.
Readers interested in the history of institutionalized religious trauma and queer survival in the 1990s will find a detailed account of conversion therapy tactics. This book is for those seeking a realistic depiction of how isolation and dogma affect adolescent self-perception. The reader walks away with a clear understanding of the resilience required to resist forced assimilation and the importance of finding community in environments that demand total conformity. It offers a factual look at the mechanisms of survival in the face of spiritual rejection.
Inward-looking and thought-provoking; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Empathetic Explorer. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 2012
- Language
- EN
