Gay the Pray Away, by Natalie Naudus

For most of her life, Valerie's family has been part of a conservative Christian religious community.  And to keep her away from rival ideas, she's been homeschooled and strictly segregated from outside influences.  No television.  Supervised internet access.  Parental review of her reading and friendships.  She notes the way all the rules seem to favor her brother and she sometimes doubts whether she really believes that Jesus wants her to do little more than raise babies, but she's accepted that these are just the way things are.

And then a new girl named Riley and her mother joins the congregation. Riley is free spirited, outspoken, and amazingly beautiful.  Valerie has only ever known homosexuality as a vile sin.  The idea that she might like a girl is confusing.  And when she finds out Riley likes her, it is a revelation.  Suddenly, the world that Valerie has known seems too limited and too restrictive.  She wants more and she may have to abandon everything to get it.

Drawing on her own personal experiences with growing up in a Fundamentalist family, there's a didactic mission in the storytelling.  I didn't mind the agenda as much as the way Valerie herself is portrayed.  For a young woman indoctrinated for so many years, she seemed awfully articulate about her ideology.  There's some attempt to explain this by having Valerie spending time in the public library sneaking in lots of reading.  However, few adolescents are this well-spoken and her voice sounded informed for a few extra years on the outside.  That makes Naudus's point for her easier, but by depriving Valerie of authenticity.  

The story dwells on all the things that are wrong with this isolated community, but misses chances to explain why it works for the people trapped within it.  I'm fascinated by Valerie's Taiwanese mother and we are teased at points by Valerie's observations of why being a believer serves her mother's needs, but so much more could have been done with it.  Valerie's brother and her best friend Hannah are also interesting cases in alternative paths tread that could have been expanded to fill out Valerie's journey.  All opportunities lost for a slow and largely repetitive list of the community's faults.