I Am Not Esther

In 1998, New Zealand author Fleur Beale published the young adult novel I Am Not Esther. A coming of age story that traces a teen girl’s life with and escape from a fundamentalist Christian cult, the novel is a harrowing look at the way indoctrination can alter the mind of even a completely unwilling cult participant. I Am Not Esther is the first of a trilogy of books that tackle cult life from the perspectives of the teenage girls trapped within it.

Fourteen-year-old Kirby Greenland’s life is chaotic, but manageable. Her mom is flaky, and Kirby often has to be the parent, taking care of household chores and making sure the bills get paid and the laundry gets done. Still, overall she has friends and is happy.

One day, her mother becomes upset over a letter and announces that she is quitting her job at the hospital in order to spend the next two years in Africa as a nurse for refugees. In the meantime, Kirby will live with her Uncle Caleb Pilgrim and his family – people Kirby has never even heard of before, who live in a city she has never visited.



The Pilgrim family completely upends Kirby’s life. They belong to a strict, extremist sect of Christianity called the Children of the Faith – a fictional cult that echoes the beliefs of many real ones. Immediately, Kirby is renamed Esther Pilgrim, since all cultists must have Biblical names. Soon, she must accept all aspects of the Rule that Uncle Caleb enforces.

The Rule encompasses small things, such as no one is allowed to use contractions when they speak or do anything for fun or relaxation. The Rule also reigns over big things. Women must wear clothing that covers all the skin and braid their hair, the questioning of authority and higher education are not allowed, and everyone must be kept away from the world and only focused on God, so no TV or radio. Kirby realizes that the Rule extends out even further. Women’s role is to stay home and have as many children as possible, so as soon as she turns sixteen, she will be forced to marry a boy of her Uncle Caleb’s choosing.

Kirby rejects every aspect of this teaching, but whenever she doesn’t follow the Rule, the punishment is severe and collective. She is placed in a solitary room to learn Bible verses in isolation, while her Uncle Caleb, Aunt Naomi, and her cousins must stay on their knees and pray over her until she relents. It is impossible for Kirby to watch the youngest cousins in clear physical pain during the hours of prayer, so she finds it easier to bend to the Rule rather than let the tiny Magdalene Pilgrim suffer on her behalf. At first, her nodding and smiling in agreement is fake, but soon Kirby finds herself entering into her Esther personality more and more easily, in a way that starts to blur her real identity.



In the meantime, cult life grows more and more oppressive. Uncle Caleb refuses to tell Esther anything about where her mother is and doesn’t allow her to read the letters that her mother has been sending. At the same time, Esther is concerned about the fate of her cousin Miriam, who disappeared from the family several weeks before Esther arrived. No one in the family talks about what has happened to Miriam; instead, they all insist that she is “dead.”

Soon, Esther spies cracks in the armor of the Rule. Several of the girls surreptitiously break the Rule at school, where they can get away with it without Uncle Caleb finding out. Also, her older cousin, Daniel, has dreams of being a doctor, even though he will never be allowed to go to college or medical school. Esther and Daniel grow close; he helps her retrieve her mother’s letters and tries to help her acclimate to the family and her new surroundings. After about four months of this life, Esther and Daniel decide to run away.

After a heated debate with his father in which Daniel reveals that he would like to become a doctor in order to help The Children of the Faith, Daniel is severely beaten by cult elders. Esther and Daniel are thrown out of the cult and declared dead – they can never again have any communication with the other children.



Esther is thrilled to be free of the confinement, but she struggles to figure out how to get back to her Kirby personality. She and Daniel travel to the city of Wellington, where they find Kirby’s mother in a psychiatric hospital – instead of leaving the country to go to Africa, she had had a psychotic breakdown and has been in treatment. Her mother reveals that she herself grew up in The Children of the Faith cult. After being raped by another cult member and becoming pregnant with his child, she was beaten by her father and thrown out of the group and forced to learn to live in the normal world with no resources at all.

This revelation helps Kirby start to leave behind her Esther persona. Her transformation back to her normal self is complete when she sees a documentary about The Children of the Faith on TV – it’s helpful to see what the Rule is like from the outside rather than being forced to be inside it. The novel ends with Kirby and her mother back at home, and with Kirby realizing that Esther is now “dead.”