Did you read The Scarlet Letter and think that could never happen today? First time novelist, Jolina Petersheim brilliantly brings Hawthorn’s classic novel into the present with The Outcast. Rachel, unwilling to repent and reveal the identity of the baby’s father, is forced to leave her Mennonite community. She finds refuge with a kind woman, Ida Mae, who offers her a job and a home. It seems she has left her old life behind until she discovers her child is sick and returns to the Mennonite community she left behind where she must face her family and her sin.
