The Book of Essie

The Book of Essie is a 2018 novel by American author Meghan MacLean Weir. Set in the present-day United States, in the southeastern region colloquially known as the “Bible Belt,” it follows Esther Hicks, a girl who struggles with her family’s notoriety. Hicks’s father is a famous Evangelical megachurch preacher, and her mother meticulously runs the family’s public image; collectively, they star in a reality TV show called “Six for Hicks.” Having been born into unimaginable fame (and infamy), Hicks often yearns for an escape from her family but finds it difficult to imagine. Her chance comes at a point of crisis, when she gets pregnant and refuses to identify the father. While her mother tries to do damage control, Hicks orchestrates a plan to cut ties. The novel draws many elements from reality TV of the Kardashian era, examining its vices, pitfalls, and distortions of truth.

As the novel begins, Hicks’s mother is panicking about her pregnancy and how it will affect the family’s image. She has narrowed her strategy down to two options: either she will dispatch the baby with an abortion or by paying off someone to adopt it; or, she will pretend that the baby is her own child. Hicks, unsurprised by her mother’s plotting, plans instead to leverage her fame to marry a popular senior at the local high school, Roarke Richards. Roarke barely knows Hicks, and is overwhelmed at first by her proposition – he is also gay, which further complicates the matter. He changes his mind when Hicks bribes him with money that will help salvage his family’s business, on top of paying for his college tuition.

Roarke and Hicks set up dates and make up other plans on a regular basis, bent on convincing their millions of viewers that their relationship is authentic. In order for the church to approve of “their” baby, they exaggerate their length of involvement so that it seems possible they conceived it in wedlock. Hicks hides her pregnancy for as long as she is able before it becomes undeniable, then stages an announcement, to the excitement of her viewers. However, Roarke soon realizes that Hicks does not intend to divorce him after the baby is born. She intends to leverage their marriage to withdraw from her family’s dynastic reality show. Rather than out her publicly, Roarke shows sympathy for her, helping her maintain the facade. They are assisted further by a reporter named Liberty Bell; jaded by the media’s distortions of truth, she jumps on the bandwagon and helps prune their public image. Liberty reveals that she used to belong to a cult, and then was freed; this experience gives her sympathy for Hicks, who essentially lives in a different kind of cult.



At the end of the novel, Hicks successfully escapes from her father. She feels no remorse about leaving a man who enriched himself like a parasite on Americans who simply don’t know how to discern truth for themselves. Roarke gets into college, and Hicks helps him fund his own ticket out of town. The Book of Essie is critical of both reality TV and the strange familial configurations that predated the predatory genre. Ultimately, its protagonists use their wits to undermine the same system that imprisons them, claiming their own futures.