I s sin an inescapable condition? Ruth, the narrator of Kate Riley’s first novel, has given this question much thought. When she asks forgiveness, she does so in the knowledge that she will ‘sin again immediately’. If she controls her sins of commission (lies, covetousness), she knows she will be undone by her innumerable sins of omission (withheld laughter, boredom). In her bleak moral arithmetic, the day’s failures will always outweigh its successes.

Ruth was born in Gracefield, Michigan, a Christian commune run by the Brotherhood, a fictional Anabaptist sect with settlements across North America. Like the Amish and Mennonites, its members wear plain garments and keep their faces bare, in a ‘constantly recalibrating state of voluntary poverty’. In order to embrace the values of the

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