Our Last Resort

Frida returns to the room to find Gabriel gone. He is prone to migraines, and she wonders if something is wrong. She begins to panic, but Gabriel soon returns. She asks him where he went, and he counters by asking her why she got up and left. She explains that she was outside smoking. She wants to tell him about William and Sabrina Brenner, but she does not want to upset him. She recalls that during their childhood, she was the brave one. The tables, she thinks, have turned.

Gabriel teases her about her smoking, gently reminding her that it is prohibited on hotel grounds. Frida tries to laugh, but she struggles to feel anything but worry. She cannot get herself to calm down. Gabriel, however, seems fine and soon falls back asleep. Frida sits on the edge of his bed. She is too unsettled by the Brenners to fall asleep again.

The novel flashes back to Frida’s eighth birthday. While the cult she was part of acknowledged birthdays, it did not celebrate them. Frida is outside playing when one of the older girls takes her to Émile, their leader. Frida believes he is all-knowing and all-powerful. He is in charge of everyone, including all the mothers and their children. When she arrives in his large and imposing office, he tells her that she is there to take a test—one that everyone in their community must take. He asks her, “chicken or fish?” (16). The community does not eat meat, and Frida is confused. He then shows her two videos, each showing a plethora of images of succulent chicken and fish dishes. Frida chooses chicken. He then shows her another video of chickens being gruesomely killed in factory farms. Later, she would learn that there was another similar video for fish. The correct answer, she learns, is to choose neither. Years later, all of these details would come out in the media reports, and the general public would wonder in astonishment at how so many people were taken in by Émile.

Frida thinks back to how she and Gabriel were close as children and remained bonded even when he moved 2,000 miles away to Seattle. He moved away not long after the police investigation. At first, they emailed almost daily, Frida visited Gabriel, and they met in places like Yosemite and Vancouver to vacation together. However, they drifted apart eventually. They reconnected recently because there is to be a new documentary on the cult, and Gabriel has agreed, finally, to give an interview. Frida did as well, and they decided to meet up and talk before filming began. When they arrived in Escalante, they had not seen each other in five years.

Gabriel wakes in a panic. There is a commotion outside their room. He and Frida run out to find the hotel compound buzzing with staff, guests, and paramedics as Sabrina lies dead in a pool of blood. Gabriel leans down to look at the body at the same time that William does. Gabriel grabs hold of Sabrina’s lifeless hand, and the paramedics ask him to let go. William becomes agitated and screams both at the paramedic and at Gabriel. William steps forward, grabbing Gabriel’s shirt and telling him to get away from Sabrina. Frida attempts to come between them, flashing back to the violence that they endured as children. Eventually, William backs off. Gabriel seems to panic and apologizes to everyone present for getting too close to the body.

Frida recalls that Gabriel and his wife Annie dated for only six months before they got married. Not long after, she was found dead near one of her favorite running trails. The police questioned Gabriel multiple times but were unable to tie him to the crime. However, that did not stop the public from running wild with the story that Gabriel killed her, and his life became difficult. Once the police officially cleared him, he moved to Seattle to escape his notoriety. This incident taught Frida that in the court of public opinion, if someone emerges early on as a suspect, it is difficult to re-write the narrative. With this lesson in mind, she vows to speak to the police about the violent argument she witnessed between William and Sabrina.

The novel flashes back to Frida’s time in the cult. Émile gives daily lectures, which are called Assembly, each morning after breakfast. All of the children gather to listen to him share his wisdom. The community lives in an old boarding school complex, and Assembly is held in its chapel. Émile is French and drifted to the United States a few years before starting this group. Members wear ordinary clothing, but each wears a braided bracelet to denote how elevated their thinking has become. Émile’s is bright yellow, and the children’s bracelets are a grimy white.

At Assembly, Émile tells them all that unless they control their minds, they will become like chickens running around with their heads cut off. Gabriel begins laughing, and Frida is horrified: It is forbidden to laugh at their leader. But she finds that his laughter is contagious, and she giggles, too. The two of them are forcibly removed from their seats, and Frida is handled so violently that she hears something snap in her shoulder and is instantly in pain. They are locked in a broom closet for hours with no food or water. Later, when they are allowed out, they share their first meal together. In the present timeline, they tell people that they are siblings, but they did not grow up with that kind of “normal” vocabulary. There were many mothers and many children at the cult, and Frida and Gabriel were among them.

Frida speaks to one of the investigating officers. She nervously shares the story of the violent argument she witnessed between Sabrina and William. Afterward, she meets Gabriel for a buffet breakfast in the hotel restaurant. The hotel does not typically do buffets, but the investigation has upended everyone’s routine. The line of people waiting for food calls up images of Frida’s childhood, and her anxiety mounts. William gets her a plate of food but encourages her to head back to the line if she wants anything else. She recalls the breakfasts of their youth: Everyone was hungry, and Émile, their “prophet,” would calmly sip coffee in the corner. Frida and Gabriel have not gone hungry in many years, but she knows he shares her nervousness around food.

Frida also wonders if he is thinking about Annie. The police questioned Frida about Annie’s murder, too. She knows how difficult the entire situation was for Gabriel. Her reverie is interrupted by an angry scream. She watches as the police arrest William. He does not go quietly, and as he thrashes around in the officer’s arms, Frida is sure that he looks directly at her.

Frida thinks back to her time in the cult. All of the children in the cult are raised communally. Mothers, as a group, care for all of the children. There are rumors of which children belong to which parents: Certain mothers and, sometimes, even fathers hover over a particular child, and there are resemblances, but Émile believes that corruption begins in the nuclear family unit. For this reason, he says that parenting must be a shared task.

Neither Frida nor Gabriel are children with parents who hover over them, so they are both raised by everyone and no one. They are lonely and adrift until they meet each other. They are the same age with inverted birthdays, 6/12 and 12/6, and believe this is a sign. They bond quickly and begin sharing everything—food, chores, their time—and reach adolescence.

Children, once grown, remain in the cult. No one leaves. Émile assures everyone that he has built a perfect life. Frida is scared of the outside world. She knows nothing else besides the cult, and the communal parenting routinely uses violence and the threat of violence to maintain order. As a result, she has always been anxious. Gabriel, however, is bolder and full of curiosity. He wants to leave and see what the outside world is like. Initially, however, Frida is too fearful to agree when he suggests sneaking out.