This is a beautifully written book. The suspense keeps the pages turning, but underneath the story line are bigger issues to ponder. What exactly is justice? What is permissible in the name of survival? What would we each do in order to simply stay alive--and what do we do in the normal course of events that keeps us alive and operating within our own belief of who we are? How do we assess a balance of power, and how is that balance established or over-turned? How do we explain our own actions later in the retelling--are we honest or just trying to appear so?

Charlotte Rogan isn't bound by traditional conventions in her writing--she isn't afraid to make the reader question what is being revealed even as the revelations happen. An undercurrent of manic laughter lingers within the narrative line as the narrator, Grace, describes the increasingly raw circumstances of the survivors.

I had occasion to read a few passages aloud---in doing so, the artfulness of the language was clear. This is an unusual book--nothing formulaic about it. I finished it, and started over again.