Eight women from two families, the Friesens and the Loewens, are then selected to meet in a hayloft and decide the group’s collective future. Some choose the first option, but the rest deadlock. This is the breaking point for most of the women, and they vote on how to respond: they can do nothing, they can stay and fight, or they can leave. The women know that, when the men return in two days’ time, they will be told by their church leader to forgive their attackers- to absolve the men so they will be allowed into heaven and also to save their own souls, as bestowing forgiveness is a mandate of their faith. At the start of the book, the women of the colony have gathered alone, the able-bodied men having travelled to the city to bail out the rapists. The girls and women of Molotschna were victims of nightly attacks, like the real women in Bolivia, and the perpetrators have been arrested. Women Talking takes place in a fictionalized colony called Molotschna, an ultraconservative Mennonite community that exists apart from its unnamed country.
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