Peggy Riley is a writer and playwright. She recently won a Highly Commended prize in the 2011 Bridport Prize. Her short fiction has been broadcast on BBC Radio and has been published in "New Short Stories 4", Mslexia Magazine, and as an app on Ether Books. Her plays have been commissioned and produced off-West End, regionally and on tour. She has been a festival producer, a bookseller, and writer-in-residence at a young offender's prison. Originally from Los Angeles, Peggy now lives on the North Kent coast in Britain. She is currently working on her second novel, which will be set in the women's internment camp on the Isle of Man during WWII.

Playwright Riley’s debut novel is a harsh but compassionate look at nature vs. nurture through the lens of a polygamous cult. Sisters Amity and Sorrow were born and raised by their mother, Amaranth, the first of the 50 wives of a self-proclaimed prophet, the leader—“preacher, father, husband”—of a doomsday sect. When a confrontation with the law results in gunshots and a fire, Amaranth grabs her teenage daughters, steals a car, and drives for four days until, exhausted, she crashes near a gas station in rural Oklahoma. Sorrow, a self-righteous teenage sociopath who will destroy anyone and anything to prove she is God’s chosen one, locks herself in the bathroom, where she has a miscarriage. The more compliant Amity is torn between her mother and her sister, on one side, and a world she’s never experienced on the other. As they explore this new world, meeting people and making their own choices for the first time, Sorrow, with off-putting self-involvement masquerading as religious fervor, tries to destroy everyone who tries to help them. Riley’s mastery keeps this unusual tale from descending into melodrama, and she makes no easy choices. Sorrow’s desperate escalations lead to an unsurprising revelation that is no less powerful for its foreshadowing. A fierce and disturbing novel. Agent: Joy Harris, the Joy Harris Literary Agency. (Apr.) 2012 Reed Business Information

"AMITY & SORROW, grace and hope, honor and innocence, bliss and deliverance-all of this from one beautifully nuanced story about the nature of family and the power of faith. I savored every word."

"A beautiful and terrifying book. Peggy Riley tells a complex and enthralling tale of family love and religious belief with uncommon wisdom, grace, and skill."

"Tense, compelling.... [and] tightly constructed.... Riley constantly surprises the reader with strangely apt metaphors.... The subject matter could easily lend itself to melodrama, but Riley doesn't fall into it. Even the most shocking and violent scenes don't exploit the suffering of the characters; they reveal the complicated reasons for their behavior. Riley strips her story to an almost mythic essence without losing track of the details that ground it in a specific time and place. A sense of imminent danger coexists with an awareness of the possibility of healing, and the tension between horror and hope makes the novel hard to put down."

"Riley writes with a quiet lyricism.... the relationships [Amaranth and Amity] build there are genuinely moving."

"Fierce and disturbing.... Riley's debut novel is a harsh but compassionate look at nature vs. nurture through the lens of a polygamous cult."

"[An] accomplished, harrowing debut.... Riley's descriptive prose is rich in metaphor.... [and] the haunting literary drama simmers to a boil as it deftly navigates issues of family, faith, community, and redemption."

"A literary page-turner.... Her writing is clear, crisp, chilling..."

"Fierce and disturbing.... A harsh but compassionate look at nature vs. nurture."

"Gripping.... a must-read for book lovers."

"A powerful book about hope and redemption, as well as the perils of unquestioned belief and obedience."

"[A] shimmering first novel.... This delicately stitched, finely patterned and poetic novel suggests there is a tipping point at which human resilience disappears.... Riley has a gift for metaphor that gives this novel loft, and a rhythmic way of swinging from present to past."

"An accomplished debut novel.... The prose moves easily between past and future, between mother and daughter. Riley possesses a remarkable ability to prettily describe disturbing events; it's abrasive, yet compelling. She examines the complexities of families and the need to belong, how we lie best when we lie to ourselves (well said, Stephen King), and the ability to adapt."

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