Saving Grace, Finding Hope

The village sits off in the mountains and runs on its own rules. It is a cult, outsiders brought into it are not let out again, and anyone who helps one of them is punished for it. Monica Carpel was a doctoral researcher on a trip in those mountains ten years ago when she was taken. She was held in the village and gave birth to a daughter there, Nina. The ten years that followed nearly finished her. Nina grew up inside the village. At nine she learned from a teacher, Ruth Leed, who her mother had been before, and she got her mother's chains off and took the punishment for it alone. Monica got out. The city she comes back to does not settle her. Her family has money and reach, and she has a fiancé, Simon Locke. She returns to the village with both of those behind her, for her daughter and for the people who kept her there.