"In 1971, a property speculator named Harley Mann begins recording his life story onto a reel-to-reel machine. Reflecting on his childhood in the early twentieth century, Harley recounts that after his father's sudden death, his family migrated down to Florida's swamplands--mere miles away from what would become Disney World--to join a community of Shakers. Led by Elder John, a generous man with a mysterious past, the colony devoted itself to labor,...

An enthralling debut novel about a teenage girl who finds refuge--but perhaps not--in an 1840s Shaker community. In this exquisite, transporting debut, 15-year-old Polly Kimball sets fire to the family farm, killing her abusive father. She and her young brother find shelter in a Massachusetts Shaker community called The City of Hope. It is the Era of Manifestations, when young girls in Shaker enclaves all across the Northeast are experiencing extraordinary...

China Bayles isn't anxious to leave her herb shop in the Texas Hill Country for two whole weeks. But her friends and family are urging her to get some rest, and a historic Shaker village in Kentucky seems the ideal place for it. At Mount Zion, China can assist her friend Martha with some herbal workshops while learning about the Shakers, famous for their peaceful ways. As it turns out, the modern version of the village is plagued by misfortune - and...

"The Shakers were nineteenth-century America's largest and best known communal utopian society. By 1840, nearly 6,000 celibate Brothers and Sisters lived and worked in 18 communities from Maine to Kentucky. The Shakers were famous for their unusual way of life, for the excellence and simplicity of their work, and for the dance worship that gave them their name. For more than 200 years the Shakers pursued their unique way of life, based on principles...

"It's 1796, and traveling weaver Will Rees is visiting Salem, Massachusetts. He's in town to buy a luxurious gift for his pregnant wife, a few yards of well-made fabric from the traders at the famed Salem harbor. While traveling through Salem, however, Rees comes upon a funeral procession for the deceased Mrs. Antiss Boothe. When Rees happens upon Twig, a friend who fought alongside him in the war, he learns that Mrs. Boothe had been very ill, and...

"In 1918, as the Great War rages in Europe, the Spanish influenza tears a brutal path across the United States, leaving devastation in its wake. Ordinary life is turned upside down as schools are closed, and all spheres of public life are shut down. Suddenly, eleven-year-old Lydia Pierce and her older brother, Daniel, find themselves orphans of the flu, and are taken by their grieving uncle to be raised in the Shaker community at Sabbathday Lake....