Thirty Girls - Hardcover

"Esther's struggles are universally compelling-heartbreaking, stomach-churning Factual undergirding lends a lightning crackle to her troubled sentiments But by narrative's end, it is Jane who will be tested to see if she is ready to meet life's terrible challenges with transformative grace."

-Kirkus

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"A novel of quiet humanity and probing intelligence Minot is particularly good on the topology of desire But it's the story of what happened to those 30 abducted girls that shows Minot's gifts as a writer Minot takes huge questions and examines them with both a delicate touch and a clear-eyed, unyielding scrutiny."

-New York Times Book Review

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Esther is a Ugandan teenager abducted by the Lord's Resistance Army and forced to witness and commit unspeakable atrocities, who is struggling to survive, to escape, and to find a way to live with what she has seen and done. Jane is an American journalist who has traveled to Africa, hoping to give a voice to children like Esther and to find her center after a series of failed relationships. In unflinching prose, Minot interweaves their stories, giving us razor-sharp portraits of two extraordinary young women confronting displacement, heartbreak, and the struggle to wrest meaning from events that test them both in unimaginable ways.
With mesmerizing emotional intensity and stunning evocations of Africa's beauty and its horror, Minot gives us her most brilliant and ambitious novel yet.