Women Talking: A Novel

By Miriam Toews

For several years, girls and women in the remote Mennonite colony of Molotschna have reported assaults in the night by what some in the community claim are ghosts or demons. Others blame “wild female imagination”—until several of the men behind the attacks are discovered and apprehended. While the men of the colony go into town to bail out the accused, the women meet secretly in a hayloft to determine how to respond. They have just two days to decide what to do before the men return. Acerbic, funny, tender and wise, acclaimed author Miriam Toews’s spellbinding seventh novel contains a universe of revelatory thinking about gender, justice, freedom and power.