The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly

The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly is a young adult psychological thriller by Stephanie Oakes. Published in 2015, it tells the story of a teenage girl with no hands who ends up in juvenile detention after escaping from a religious cult. An FBI agent offers her a deal in exchange for her cooperation. But to do that, she’ll have to divulge a number of secrets from her past. The plot is loosely based on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale “The Maiden Without Hands.” The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly is Oakes’s first novel.

The novel, narrated in the first person, opens with seventeen-year-old Minnow wearing a shirt soaked in blood. She brutally beats a boy named Philip in the opening pages, kicking him over and over. The reason why is unclear. The police arrive, along with medics for Philip. They prepare to arrest Minnow, but they can’t handcuff her: she has no hands.

Gradually, flashbacks reveal Minnow’s past. They mingle with present-day Minnow in juvenile detention after being found guilty of assault. She continues to wear the bloody shirt, refusing to take it off. And there’s more: an FBI agent, Dr. Wilson, has questions for Minnow. She is the survivor of a cult, and that cult’s village burned down just before she was arrested. Its leader is dead. Wilson offers her a way to get out of juvenile. He tells her about the Bridge Program, which would offer a way out of juvenile detention and into society. But to receive his recommendation for the program, she has to tell him what she knows. For the first time, Minnow opens up.



Minnow grew up inside the Kevinian cult. The leader is Kevin, referred to as “The Prophet.” The sole purpose of a woman in the cult—referred to as the Community—is to marry and bear her husband’s children. They are kept ignorant and subservient, with no knowledge of other ways of life.

Members of the Community live simple, rural lives. They wake up early to milk the cows and carry out other necessary chores. Every family is large; the Community practices polygamy, so each man has multiple wives and many children. No one is permitted to read or listen to music; the Prophet claims these things belong to the Devil. Everyone must obey the Prophet’s many rules or face dire consequences. Minnow learns that for herself.

The Prophet has eight wives already, but he wants more. He wants Minnow for his ninth wife. But Minnow refuses, trying to escape the compound. She is captured and faces punishment for her defiance. It is a terrible one: the Prophet orders her father to cut off her hands. Her father debates with himself whether to follow the Prophet’s orders, but finally, he does, mutilating his own daughter in the name of religion.



In juvenile detention, Minnow befriends a girl named Angel. Angel has been incarcerated for murdering her uncle, and other girls in the center fear her. She is serving the longest sentence of anyone there: forty years; she is considered violent. Yet, Angel helps Minnow adapt to her new surroundings, surroundings that feel particularly alien to such a sheltered teenage girl.

Through more flashbacks, the reasons for Minnow’s defiance become clearer: one day, in the woods, she met a boy from outside the Community named Jude. Jude is of mixed race, half-white and half-black. He and his father live secluded from society as well, in a small cabin in the woods. Minnow has been taught that anyone outside the Community is evil and that anyone non-white is especially so. In spite of that, she befriends him, as she later befriends Angel. He shows her kindness that no one has ever shown her before. She confesses her desire to be able to read and learn for herself. As they grow older, they fall in love, but there is an issue: Minnow dreams of experiencing the world outside the compound, but Jude is content to live in the woods forever.

After Minnow’s hands are cut off, she runs to Jude and his family for comfort. Her faith in God is shattered. Jude is enraged, saying he will kill whoever is responsible. They agree that Minnow must leave the Community for good, but she wants to return for her little sister, Constance. Constance, still a child, is nevertheless next in line to marry the Prophet, and Minnow wants to protect her.



In juvenile detention, Minnow is able to read; she begins to regain her lost faith as she discovers the words of the Bible for herself, rather than the Prophet’s twisted version of religion. As Minnow adapts to her new life, she throws away the blood-soaked shirt. Minnow learns that Angel killed her uncle because he was abusing her; she finally fought back in self-defense. Many of the girls in detention bear cigarette burns and other scars on their bodies that hint at their own stories of abuse and trauma.

Dr. Wilson brings her a “birthday present” uncovered from the remains of the Prophet’s house: her severed hands, which the Prophet had reserved. When Minnow sees them again, it is somehow freeing.

One day, Minnow is assigned to a work detail at an orchard. There, she seems to see Jude, out of nowhere. He tells her he survived the fire and has been living on his own in a cave. He asks her to come with him, but though she loves him, she declines. She no longer wants to live alone with him in the woods. She wants to become a part of society.



Finally, Minnow reveals the story of the fire at the Community. Minnow was caught and tortured when she returned to the village and discovered that Constance was brainwashed and happy to marry the Prophet. Jude was also caught and beaten. The blood-soaked shirt Minnow wore at the novel’s beginning was Jude’s. Minnow managed to sneak into the Prophet’s house, where she discovered inhalers: he had asthma, but he had claimed God cured him of all illness. The prophet died of an asthma attack.

Jude’s father, Waylon, set the fire out of grief and anger for his son. Constance died in the fire. What happened to Jude is left ambiguous. Minnow suggests that Jude died. If so, her encounter with him in the orchard was a hallucination or delusion of some kind. Her reliability as a narrator is unclear. But she is beginning to admit the truth to herself. The book ends without tying up loose ends: it is left up to the reader whether Minnow is able to join the Bridge Program and leave the detention center, or what Jude’s fate was.

The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly received positive reviews; Booklist praised Oakes’s “beautiful and harrowing prose.” The book became a Morris Award Honor Book, a Golden Kite Honor Book, and a New York Public Library Best Book for Teens. Oakes’s second novel, The Arsonist, was published in 2017.