"Generous and unblinking...give[s] thoughtful voice to the power of doctrine."
– New York Times Book Review

“Hurley’s writing is beguiling…A remarkable exploration of what it is to believe, to lose, and to start again.”
– Kirkus Reviews

“A page-turner with prose so beautiful, you’ll want to stop and linger over each chapter.”
– Laura Hankin, author of Happy and You Know It

“A timeless story about family and friendship, love and power, staying put and breaking free.”
– Rachel Beanland, author of Florence Adler Swims Forever

Deep in the remote wilderness of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Nora is growing up in a militant apocalyptic religious cult. When her father, the group’s charismatic leader, discovers his young daughter’s gift for speaking in tongues and prophesying, he employs her to recruit the devout, the paranoid, and the outcasts into their community’s open arms. But as she grows older, Nora begins to question her faith and her appointed role — and must choose between committing herself fully, or being exiled into the foreign and frightening world beyond.

Years later, Nora is working as a hospice nurse in Chicago, struggling to navigate the baffling customs of the “normal” life she is now leading. But when a letter arrives from her old community, warning her to prepare herself, it throws open the lockbox of her childhood, and sends her hurtling back into the shattering truth of what really happened on the day of her escape.

MINOR PROPHETS steps into the thorny history of religious fundamentalism in America, and the elusive power of cults in our society. It is a story of how faith and fundamentalism undergird American identity, and how women’s bodies are the battlefields upon which spiritual wars are waged.