The Gift
The church in which an expectant mother sought refuge becomes the source of her troubles with her son in the moving novel The Gift.
In Scott Terry’s decades-spanning historical novel The Gift, a vulnerable young mother-to-be is entrenched in a manipulative church.
In 1959, as seventeen-year-old Pansy struggles to support herself, a manipulative Jehovah’s Witness indoctrinates her into the church. A decade later, Pansy’s third-grader, Butch, is mentored by his kindly neighbor Steve, who teaches him how to be a cowboy. On account of the church, Pansy doesn’t approve, and her relationship with Butch begins to wither.
Following Pansy’s conservative evolution from the 1950s through the 1990s and her relationship with Butch, The Gift spans decades. It’s an intricate tale of a religious institution preying on a weak, naive woman. Pansy starts off as a teenager whose vulnerability is observed and manipulated by the Jehovah’s Witnesses. She is layered and complex, and her slow evolution from vulnerable youth to oppressive church member is a highlight of the novel.
Though teenage Pansy manipulates others, it is clear through her actions that she only does so because she has no other choice. However, as the decades pass, her survival instincts transform. She becomes strict and exhibits bigotry, finding sanctuary in the rigid structure of her congregation. Her development is slow and tragic, embellished by details about the people who failed her. Indeed, Pansy elicits empathy even when her actions become unforgivable.
At Pansy’s opposite is Butch, who feels alienated by his mother’s church-centered lifestyle. Butch is underdeveloped in comparison to Pansy, though. Indeed, his perspective is excluded for the first third of the book. Still, his story is no less tragic: The more he grows into himself, the further he moves away from his mother. Pansy’s eccentric family members, a no-good community leader, Steve, and Butch’s various friends and lovers add color and humor to the story.
The book moves at a slow pace to show how Pansy’s tumultuous young adulthood was a direct cause of Butch’s lifelong struggles, including with his sexual orientation. Its prose is smooth and immersive, informed by people’s regional dialects and observations such as “Religion is so damn focused on a future in heaven, that your life ain’t worth shit today.” Indeed, Pansy’s church is rendered the true villain in the mother-son tale owing to its restrictive rules, manipulative recruitment strategies, and widespread corruption, all of which inform Butch’s trajectory before he is even conceived.
The Gift is a fantastic multigenerational novel about a family’s experiences with religious predation and abuse.
Reviewed by
Leah Block
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
