I just finished reading this book for the second time. I think I loved it more than the first. The only books I tend to give 5 stars to are books that make me want to reinvent my life when they are over, live a better life, and be a better person. This really isn't that kind of book but it is greatness through and through.

There were times while reading this book that I just needed to put it down. I knew if I kept reading I would get too sad. I was right there with Ninah, going through her struggles. I wanted to so badly to reach in and tell her that everything would be okay, that she was doing just fine. I couldn't though. I had to sit back and watch her suffer and wait for James to tell her that she was "doing good".

I don't want to be Ninah or have her life. I do aspire to have her strength to see through the twisted community that there is no escaping from. Like all of us, her life is what it is. She will forever be influenced by it but she has discovered that she can form her own opinions, make her own choices, and she is her own person. It is a lesson that we all need to learn.

"The eye of a needle is like the gateway to Heaven," Nanna said, "Hard to tell who's going to be on a straight enough path to get through it." But I knew that it took more than being on the straight path. You had to be stiff enough not to bend when you tried to slip through. You had to be careful not to slip to the left or the right and think you were going through the middle all the time.

Having grown up in the Bible belt and attending my fair share of "fire and brimstone" sermons, I could totally relate to Ninah and her internal struggle with God, salvation, fear, and trying to live for herself while not upsetting the delicate balance of the religious community in which she was reared.

I totally loved this book and could not put it down....

I love this book, this crazy, beautiful, powerful, terrible, incredible book. I love it, but it makes me ache deep down for this girl and her baby, particularly for her baby, and I want to cry. If it wasn't for that ache - I'd flip back to the first page and start over right this second.

Well conceived, well written, well played - it is perfect.

Let's just say this book is very interesting. I couldn't put it down since I just kept wanting to know what twisted thing would happen next!!

A book of fanatical religious zealousness with abuses, torture, and mind control. Well, this can be viewed as that, or this is a story of how an innocent girl tried to emotionally survive in this kind of control.

Rich with symbolism, this story reads quickly and yet has depth and humor. The characters stayed with me long after the book ended. Well Nanna did, while I was deeply rooting for Grandpa Herman’s painful and brutal death.

I read this book when I was around 19 or 20. I remember loving it so much. Now, more than 10 years later, I admit that I love it more than I did the first time I picked it up. Ninah's story still resonates with me to this day.

I love, love, love this really sad and wonderful book.

Reread March 21, 2010

its aight

This was a really interesting book to read, and I loved that it was through the eyes of a young person, who was being forced to be something she wasn't while all the while defying it all, and becoming her own person anyway. Truly a very good book, I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good, simple, but also very deep read.

Reread after about five years and think I loved it even more the second time. This book is just so perfectly southern gothic and heavy and dark and poetic and dynamic. There's just so much here. Masterpiece

I could NOT put this book down. I def need to read more cult-y books.

Sheri Reynolds paints a vivid picture of "Bible Belt Cultism," as seen through the eyes of a teen-age girl named, Ninah. The Church of Fire and Brimstone and God's Almighty Baptizing Wind is pastored by Ninah's Grandfather, Herman Langston, who, as Ninah says, "Used the Bible, of course, but only the parts he liked. He had the habit of altering verses just a little to make them match his own beliefs." The church of about eighty members is composed mostly of Ninah's family and Reynolds, through Ninah, lets us view the constricted lives of the church members under the tyrannical rule of Grandpa Herman.

Their loyalty to the dictatorial Grandfather is a sober reminder of the danger involved when charismatic individuals, manipulating the Scriptures, suppress the weak and shape their lives with false doctrines. The price is excessive for such manipulation and at the Church of Fire and Brimstone it is paid out in emotionally devastated lives. The characters are addictive, the narrative exquisite, and the plot captivating. Sheri Reynolds has written a powerful novel.

Amazing book in the General feel of classic southern gothic literature. Powerful writing.

Quote “When I’ve used up all my rugs and lies, rope and hair, fabric and love, when I’m out of twine and my loom is broken and there’s still a story in me, that’s when I unknot and begin the unraveling. My rugs are never finished. I use the same materials to make them over and over again, featuring something new each time and hearing a different tale. But sometimes they speak the most wisely when they are heaps of fibers on the pack house floor, intermingling and waiting. If I sit with them silent long enough, they will talk. Just listening, I can give them tongues. They will speak like prophets”.

Ninah is a young girl moving toward adulthood who lives in a religious compound. Her questions about life and love and truth are universal. The religious setting provides context, but this is not a book about religious fervor.

I highly recommend this and Reynolds’ other masterpiece, “A Gracious Plenty” to all my friends who revel in contemporary literature.