In the 1840s, a religious revival was taking place in many Shaker communities. Members young and old were either adopted or joined through conversion. That’s the basis for writer Rachel Urquhart’s new novel, The Visionist. Urquhart – who splits  her time between the Berkshires and Brooklyn – grew up in a former Shaker meeting house in Tyringham, Massachusetts. The Visionist tells the story of 15-year-old Polly Kimbell, whose way out of an abusive household was finding a brief safe haven in The City of Hope, a fictional western Massachusetts Shaker community.

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