The Talk-Funny Girl by Roland Merullo
Seventeen-year-old Marjorie Richards is frightened. Teenage girls have gone missing in her rural New Hampshire town, never to be seen alive again. But her fear that she harbors runs deeper than what is currently making the headlines. She lives in constant worry and fear at home as well.
Marjorie's parents live deep in isolation from normal society. So isolated that they've developed their own dialect, which they've passed onto their daughter. They have also fallen under the seduction of a sadistic cult leader who has his own ideas about how to discipline sinners.
After being sent out on a job search (the check that her father receives each month for a fake back injury isn't covering their monthly expenses), failing and then being physically abused by her family's minister, a kind aunt steps in and finds Marjorie work with a young man who is building a cathedral in town, stone by stone.
As Marjorie learns and develops the skill of working with stone, her self-confidence develops as well and she soon realizes that hope does exist and that she can eventually break free from a life of torment and bleakness.
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