"Toews is an artist of escape; she always finds a way for her characters, trapped by circumstance, to liberate themselves." -Alexandra Schwartz,
The New Yorker
Jorge said he wasn't coming back until I learned how to be a better wife . . .
The life of nineteen-year-old Irma Voth, recently married and more recently deserted, is turned on its head when a film crew arrives to make a movie about the strict Mennonite community in which she and her family live. Against her family's wishes, Irma takes a job on set and glimpses the wider world and a path towards something that feels like freedom.