This spinoff to The Handmaid’s Tale, set in the same tyrannical theocracy (the Republic of Gilead), alternates between the perspectives of three very different women. Aunt Lydia, the only character who’s in both this novel and the original, was coerced into helping shape the regime when it took over, but covertly uses that power for justice as often as possible. Agnes is the biological daughter of a Handmaid (a woman forced to conceive a child for the Commander she’s assigned to) who’s raised as the daughter of a Commander and his wife; she’s groomed to become a Wife to a high-ranking man herself, but eventually decides to follow her friend Becka into the service of the Aunts, the nunlike organization that manages marriage and women’s education. Daisy is an ordinary teenager who grew up in Canada in the care of people she eventually learns are operatives of Mayday, the organization that resists Gilead.

Key Ideas

• Power over others corrupts
• Knowledge is the enemy of…