Her heroine, Tranquillity Bloom, grows up in contemporary Ballarat, in an unspecified sect which anticipates the imminent coming of Christ. They believe the Bible contains incontrovertible answers to all life’s questions, even the most trivial. The Truth leaves little room for independent thought. Tranquillity has wanted to be a nurse all her life – she doses her family with M&Ms doctored to resemble prescription tablets – but her desire to help others is quashed by her father’s doctrine of female submission. Outside contact – university in particular – is regarded as a corrupting influence. Horace does not, at first, appear to be a monstrous father. He is a self-satisfied buffoon whose eight sons mock him surreptitiously. Only Tranquillity has the courage to rebel.     

Unlike another recent first novel, Amy Espeseth’s Sufficient Grace (2012), which deals unremittingly with the dark side of a cloistered religious upbringing, Russell lulls the reader with humour. The anomalies of the sect appear innocuous until the revelation of underlying violence. The question of what impels people to remain in, or to join, a proscriptive religious community is best answered by Tranquillity’s sister-in-law, the Outsider Amy:

Reuben didn’t offer her anything over the top. Just love. Security. The answers to the origins of life, and how it was all going to work out. And he’d hold her hand in public. That’s what she wanted: to snuggle into someone when the wind blew, and have a warm, loving arm envelop her.

Holy Bible may not add significantly to our understanding of the psychology of sects or cults, but it is an assured and endearing début.