Thirty-Seven

Stenson (Fiend) delivers an eerie, complex, and unsettling portrayal of a traumatized teen caught between the brainwashing tenets of a self-destructive cult and the more common indoctrination into mainstream society’s expectations. Just released from a three-year stint in a Colorado mental health facility, 18-year-old Mason Hues narrates his life in present tense. As he puts his life back together, he works at a thrift shop and falls for owner Talley. He tells her that at 15, he ran away from a home where his father masturbated in his bedroom doorway. Mason fell in with the Survivors, a cult led by charismatic Dr. James Shepard, whose Munchausen-like belief that “sickness bears honesty, honesty bears change” prompts cult members to willingly inject themselves with chemotherapy drug Cytoxan so as to spark unconditional love for those worse off than themselves. Mason was the 37th (and final) member, but he left the group just before their perpetration of a string of violent acts that became known as the Day of Gifts. Talley, emotionally fragile herself, convinces Mason to revive the cult. Stenson infuses Mason’s chilling matter-of-fact recitation of Survivor platitudes with insight into a young man’s psychological descent. This novel is a provocative, thoroughly gripping ride. (Feb.)