A troubled teen is sent to a Baptist reform school where religious fanaticism and violence reign.

Sam Snyder is a wayward 14-year-old from California. He’s prone to stealing, addicted to porn, and is kicked out of his Christian school for lacking “spiritual desire.” Under the pretense of sending him to spend the summer in Missouri with a godfather of whom he’s never heard, Sam’s mom shuttles him to a Baptist reform school—the Mount Zion Baptist Boarding Academy—hidden deep in the woods, his new home for the next year. At Mount Zion, they quickly strip-search him, clumsily cut his hair, and present him with the list of austere prohibitions by Charles Ward, a camp leader called “Papa.” Sam rejects the angry religious extremism that permeates the school (Papa mockingly decries the “liberal church” as a “bunch of effeminate hippies”). Even more discomfiting is the ubiquitous threat of violence. Many of Sam’s schoolmates are all but hardened criminals, always ready to explode. Debut author Echan poignantly chronicles Sam’s plight: Afraid to escape, unable to be reborn religiously, he chooses the strategic path of outward conformity. “I was never gonna grow the balls to run away. The only other option after that was to get saved for real, and no way in hell I was joining the looney bin. I went with my gut. Fake it til you make it, you know.” Based on a true story, the author’s tale is quietly terrifying—one feels an amorphous evil lurking within every shadow. And when one of his schoolmates is murdered, Sam must reckon with the dire nature of his predicament. This is a gripping novel, thoughtful and dramatically harrowing.

An artfully disturbing story, as captivating as it is heart-wrenching.