Review by Fatima, age 15

Dorry is the Invisible Woman at Crestwood High, her scary new high school. She has moved to a huge city, after spending her entire life in a small town -- from a school filled with people she's known since she was a baby, to a school where she could choke to death and no-one would even notice.

At first Dorry feels as fresh and clean as a baby chick.

She makes no friends and nobody is interested in what she does. When tall, beautiful Angela and her funny, bright and good-looking friends want Dorry to have lunch with them, she is amazed. They seem so nice, so cool and relaxed. And they want to befriend her!

She learns that they are members of a religious group, called the Fishers of Men. Flattered by the attention, Dorry attends some of their functions. In the beginning, she is reluctant to join them but she soon does, not wanting to lose their friendship. At first Dorry feels as fresh and clean as a baby chick. She believes that she has been given a chance to start anew and earn God's love. But these feelings soon take a back-seat as Angela commands her to do outrageous things.

From then on, Dorry faces a torrent of the group's ever-escalating demands. Angela has very strict ideas about what a Fisher can and cannot do. She labels Dorry's crush on Brad, another Fisher, as lust and condemns Dorry. She makes Dorry feel guilty for visiting her sick mother in the hospital. She accuses Dorry of worshipping false gods because Dorry had been studying algebra for a test instead of praying.

Most of us have felt some of the despair that drives Dorry to blindly follow what she knows, underneath, is wrong.

Just as Dorry is about to go visit her family to celebrate Thanksgiving, Angela orders her to fast on the holiday. Because Dorry is overweight, Angela accuses her of worshipping the false god of food, and says that the only way to purge herself of this evil is to practice self-control. Dorry is shocked and confused and tries to protest, but Angela is firm. Angela also orders Dorry to convert at least one person on her trip. Trying to carry out Angela's orders, Dorry is ridiculed by her family. When she tries to convert her old friend, Melissa, Dorry loses her friendship.

As the year goes on, Dorry compromises her schoolwork, her family's love, and her future goals to remain in the Fishers' good books. When Dorry gets a job to earn money for college, Angela demands that money, saying that the Fishers should be the most important thing in her life. Although she senses that something is wrong, Dorry still craves acceptance and is fearful of what will happen if she disobeys. Dorry quietly carries out all the tasks assigned until an ultimate intolerable command forces her to come out of her obedient, unthinking trance and inspect her own moral values.

Leaving Fishers by Margaret Peterson Haddix is an unusual book which sets you thinking about many different things. Most of us have felt some of the despair that drives Dorry to blindly follow what she knows, underneath, is wrong. You think about loneliness. About repressed feelings. About compulsion. About the invisible chains of peer pressure holding one back. And most of all, about breaking those invisible chains and retrieving the freedom to be who you are.

Published by Aladdin
262 pages