Seed - Softcover

Lisa Heathfield launched her writing career with Seed, her stunning YA debut about a cult. Before becoming a mum to her three sons, she was a secondary school English teacher and loved inspiring teenagers to read. Paper Butterflies is her beautiful and heart-breaking second novel. Lisa lives in Brighton.

Gr 9 Up—Seed is at the center of 15-year-old Pearl's life: it is the isolated family of which she is part, it is the house in which she lives, and it is the remote patch of land around that house where she sows and gathers crops for her family's sustenance. Pearl is happy at Seed. She does not often leave because according to Papa S., the leader of Pearl's family, Seed is pure and leaving risks contact with poisoned Outsiders who may taint Pearl's spiritual core. The teen knows Papa S. is truthful, but when three Outsiders unexpectedly join the family, the patriarch's word—and Pearl's entire reality—is challenged. Heathfield's debut novel is the first in a two-book series. Pearl's development over the course of the novel is realistic and relatable, and readers will become attached and even frustrated with the heroine. The smooth pacing and sophisticated yet age-appropriate style of the work lend credence to the story as it transforms the everyday activities of Seed into complex issues of physical and emotional abuse, budding self-esteem and increasing self-reliance, fear as a means of control, and belief as an expression of faith or as a means of deception. VERDICT Seed will hold readers' attention as the story's mood slowly changes and the work builds to an ultimately stunning conclusion.—Maggie Mason Smith, Clemson University R. M. Cooper Library, South Carolina