Sixteen-year-old Lacey Anne Byer loves her small town, her lifelong friends, her loving parents and her close-knit church, where her father serves as the youth pastor. For the first time, she's old enough to have a meaningful part in the annual "Hell House" production, a dramatic presentation of sin and redemption intended to bring people to God. Each scene depicts a sin--domestic abuse, gay marriage, drunk driving, suicide--and its corresponding punishment, both in this life and the next. Lacey longs for the part of "Abortion Girl," a character who dies a gruesome death in an abortion clinic, but only after repenting. Initially Lacey's best friend's sister, Tessa, is cast in the coveted role. But when Tessa tells her family and the congregation that she is pregnant, Lacey gets the part. She throws herself into the role, but as her friends' lives unravel and she begins to fall for a former classmate with a dark past, Lacey experiences an epiphany of her own. She comes to realize that, well meaning as they may be, her parents' rigid way perhaps isn't hers, and that compassion for others in spite of their failings may be more Christ-like.
Well-drawn, three-dimensional characters who grapple with faith and doubt, confusion and conviction and with painful secrets help make this an unforgettable novel. Readers will find no easy answers here, whether they believe the tenets of Lacey's church to be repellent or comforting. Perhaps Lacey's question "Is it okay to not know what I believe?" is really the best answer of all. --Jane Henriksen Baird, public librarian in Alaska