The Grace Year

Kiersten is another grace year girl and one of the main antagonists in The Grace Year. Kiersten is described as very beautiful, and on Veiling Day, Kiersten is given the honor of being the first girl chosen for marriage. Unlike Tierney, Kiersten has her sights firmly set on marriage; more specifically, Kiersten is determined to marry Michael because of his father’s high position on the council. Tierney says that Kiersten barely acknowledges her, but on Unveiling Day, everything changes. Tierney states that Michael might think he did a noble thing by choosing Tierney for his bride, but he hasn’t saved her at all; in fact, he’s “put a target on [her] back” because of Kiersten’s jealous rage (69).

Kiersten is every bit as cruel as she is beautiful, and she is fiercely jealous of Tierney. She is highly manipulative and knows the effect she has on people. Tierney states that Kiersten’s magic “came in early, and she knew it” (18). Tierney admits that she used to see Kiersten bullying people back home, but she always turned a blind eye to it, which has allowed Kiersten to “[flower] right before [Tierney’s] eyes, a belladonna, ripe with poison” (83). Kiersten believes that her magic is controlling other people, and she isn’t far off. By using her beauty, charms, and charisma to win the other girls over to her side, Kiersten creates an army of followers who jump at the chance to do her bidding and get her revenge on Tierney over the course of the grace year.

Kiersten represents the theme of Inner Evil and Going Wild. While Tierney thinks about improving the camp, Kiersten revels and delights in the chance to cause pain and punishment. After Laura and Betsy die, Kiersten takes credit, and the girls look at Kiersten with “fear and reverence” (79). Kiersten steps into the role of a God figure, handing out decrees and punishments and rallying the girls behind her to exile those who go against her. She commands the girls to suffer in order to cleanse themselves of their magic, and she warns them that if they listen to Tierney, they will never be able to come home as “purified women.” Kiersten embraces her role as an authoritarian dictator with relish: She commands the girls to oust Tierney, and when she banishes Tierney from the camp, she states that “[her] mercy has run out” (165), invoking the biblical idea of a God who grants mercy to the worthy and denies it to detractors. Kiersten believes that her magic has made her untouchable, and her hubris even leads her to leave the barrier and stand unprotected. Whether Kiersten actually believes in the power of her own magic or not, she relies on fear and blind obedience to maintain her control over the girls. Kiersten is a static, unchanging villain until the very end of the book, when she is forced to realize that her magic will not keep her safe from poachers; only when Tierney saves her life does Kiersten finally abdicate her self-appointed throne.

Michael is a teenage boy and Tierney’s closest friend in Garner County. Tierney and Michael have known each other their whole lives, and although Tierney’s mother implies that there is something going on between them, Tierney insists that Michael is just a friend. However, on Unveiling Day, Tierney is shocked to discover that Michael has chosen Tierney as his bride; he has been in love with her for years, and he wants to marry her to keep her safe and make her happy, exactly as she is.

Michael is the only son of the head of the council. When Michael comes of age, he will take over his father’s seat and become one of the most powerful men in Garner County. However, Tierney knows from a lifetime of friendship that Michael is not looking forward to this position of power. In fact, Tierney recalls how Michael feels “pressured to follow in his father’s footsteps” (383), and on Unveiling Day, Michael promises that his marriage to Tierney won’t be traditional: He doesn’t want her to change for him, even if it means making his family happy. This sets Michael apart from many of the other men in the county, who openly ogle Tierney and who take advantage of the system to exert control over women. Still, Tierney worries that she will always be Michael’s property and that, despite his big promises, she will lose him to the societal expectations of the county. She believes that “his allegiance to his family, his faith, his sex will always prevail” and that “there will always be something in [Michael] that wants to contain [her], hide [her] from the world” (185). After the wildness of their childhood, Tierney is afraid of losing her best friend to propriety in adulthood.

However, Michael proves himself to be a good man time and time again. Tierney may not be happy with Michael for choosing her as his bride, but Michael is quick to jump to Tierney’s defense when she comes back from her grace year pregnant. In front of the entire county, Michael declares that he’s the one to blame; he “commanded [Tierney] to come to [him] in her dreams” because “[he] was selfish and couldn’t wait an entire year to be with her” (375). Michael uses his power and privilege to protect Tierney and then gives her space and time to recover from her grace year. He also burns the cabinet in the apothecary with the dead grace year girl’s body parts to demonstrate that he will not be complicit in the evil practice of buying and selling body parts. Tierney realizes that Michael truly loves and accepts her for who she is, and as the novel concludes, she “feel[s] guilty for not trusting him to be exactly what [she’s] always known him to be—a good man” (393).

Ryker is one of the poachers that hunts the grace year girls. In the last half of the novel, he also becomes Tierney’s lover and the father of her child. Ryker is the son of one of the women of the outskirts, and his father left years ago. Since then, Ryker dreams of catching a grace year girl so he can get paid enough to take his mother and sisters away from the county. However, everything changes for Ryker when he meets Tierney and has to spare her life to repay her father’s kindness.

Ryker explains that the year before, he “made a deal” with Tierney’s father: Since Tierney’s father spared Ryker’s friend Anders, Ryker would spare Tierney in return. Although Ryker only promised to save Tierney once, he finds himself letting her go several times, and he complains that “if [he’d] known how much trouble [she’d] be, [he] would’ve thought twice” (223). He nurses Tierney back to health and shows that he is not only a man of his word but also protective of those in his care. Nonetheless, Ryker is still ingrained with the belief that the grace year girls are evil and dangerous, and it is only after months of living with Tierney that he starts to question this belief.

Despite his title as a poacher, Ryker has never killed a grace year girl. This sets him apart from his peers, just as Tierney stands apart from hers. While Tierney is sick and recovering, Ryker demonstrates that he has a deep capacity for gentleness, kindness, and compassion. He tells Tierney that he is used to taking care of people: He took care of his mother when her “visitors” beat her up, and when he was younger, “it was [his] responsibility to take [his] sisters from the hut when [his mother] had a visitor” (242). As Tierney spends more time with Ryker, her attraction toward him grows. She starts thinking about the future she could have with Ryker, but because he is the predator and she is the prey, she knows they can never really be together. Nonetheless, they decide to try and break free from the confines of Garner County; together, they attempt to run away, but lingering hostility from Anders leads to Ryker’s accidental murder.

When Ryker dies, Tierney forces herself to keep going, but she thinks of him constantly, and she knows that once she gives birth to their daughter, she’ll be able to see Ryker every day.