Never Have I Ever

Clinton Drake is a teenaged boy growing up surrounded by dysfunction. He and his family have moved from the stagnant hamlet of Sunnyview to start a new cattle farm just outside the growing Albertan prairie village of Savanna which presents new challenges and a new life laying just ahead. There is one glaring problem upon arrival - the Drake family is atheist and will need to desperately try to fit into the heavily Christian community which surrounds them in order to make it work. Not a few pastures away from Savanna and the Drake farm is the New Eden Hutterite colony, where life is similarly religious and isolated, yet still quite different... and the patriarchal rules and code of ethics are not up for debate. When the family begins to establish a business relationship with the colony, lonesome Clint eventually finds a confidante in a spirited young Hutterite girl. But how can such a connection thrive under impossible expectations and circumstances? Set in the 1970s and 1980s in rural western Canada, 'Never Have I Ever' is a coming-of-age memoir told from Clinton's point of view, recalling stifled boyhood, broken families, and the survival of individuality amidst the pressures of religious orthodoxy.