Keep Sweet

Alva Jane has never questioned her parents, never questioned her faith, never questioned her future. She is content with the strict rules that define her life in Pineridge, the walled community where she lives with her father, his seven wives, and her twenty-eight siblings. This is the only world Alva has ever known, and she has never thought to challenge it.

But everything changes when Alva is caught giving her long-time crush an innocent first kiss. Beaten, scorned, and now facing a forced marriage to a violent, fifty-year old man, Alva suddenly realizes how much she has to lose—and how impossible it will be to escape.

Alva Jane has never questioned her parents, never questioned her faith, never questioned her future. She is content with the strict rules that define her life in Pineridge, the walled community where she lives with her father, his seven wives, and her twenty-eight siblings. This is the only world Alva has ever known, and she has never thought to challenge it.

But everything changes when Alva is caught giving her long-time crush an innocent first kiss. Beaten, scorned, and now facing a forced marriage to a violent, fifty-year old man, Alva suddenly realizes how much she has to lose—and how impossible it will be to escape.

Publishers Weekly

For most of the women inside Pine-ridge, an isolated compound of Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints in Utah, keeping sweet (“obedience with a willing and happy heart”) is their ultimate duty before God. Underage marriages, strict rules of conduct (unwavering devotion to the prophet, a birth every year after marriage, seclusion from the outside world), and a polygamist lifestyle are not only enforced, but embraced. But when 14-year-old Alva Jane is caught kissing a boy she hopes to wed, a vicious beating and a grave punishment—to become the sixth wife of the prophet's brother, a sadistic man 40 years her senior—exposes the community's capacity for brutality. Like Carol Lynch Williams's The Chosen One (2009), which explored similar territory, Greene's (Chasing the Jaguar) account of Alva Jane's progression from naïve disciple to skeptic is gripping, horrifying, and convincing. However, the story's climax (Alva Jane's second escape attempt) feels rushed and underdeveloped, leaving several plot points—a sudden police raid on Pineridge, Alva Jane's pregnancy, and the possibility of a new life for her in the outside world—frustratingly unexplored. Ages 14–up. (Mar.)

Michele Dominguez Greene is the author of Keep Sweet and Chasing the Jaguar. She is active in numerous writing and literacy workshops with inner city kids throughout Southern California, and speaks regularly at conferences around the country. She has published articles in the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Animal Wellness Magazine, and Cuerpo Magazine, and has had a long-standing, successful career as an actress, appearing in television, film, and theater. She lives in Los Angeles.