Lapvona

In a captivating book that is Ottessa Moshfegh's most thrilling leap yet, a motherless shepherd kid finds himself the unusual center of a power struggle that puts all kinds of faith to the ultimate test in a community in a medieval fiefdom battered by natural calamities.

The local shepherd's abusive and naive son Marek never met his mother since his father told him she passed away before delivery. Marek's ongoing relationship with Ina, the blind village midwife who breastfed him as a newborn and did likewise for many other village children, is one of his few consolations in life. Beyond child care, Ina has a special talent for communicating with the natural world. No matter how pious the other villagers may be, her talent often allows her to receive spiritual information transmission on a level much above what they could receive. Some consider Ina's house in the woods outside of the settlement to be a godless place that should be avoided.

Father Barnabas, the local priest and lackey for the corrupt governor and lord Villiam, whose hilltop mansion hides a hidden embarrassment of wealth, is one of their number. Villiam and the priest cruelly test the people's desperate desire to believe that there are higher forces that really care about them, particularly in light of this year's unprecedented drought and hunger. However, as destiny takes Marek dangerously close to the lord's family, mysterious and unexpected forces upend the established hierarchy. The line between sight and blindness, life and death, the physical world and the hereafter, and civilization and barbarism will be very thin by the end of the year.