For the crime of stealing bread, fourteen-year-old May receives a life sentence: she must become a Sin Eater - a shunned woman whose fate is to hear the final confessions of the dying, eat ritual foods symbolizing their sins as a funeral rite, and thereby shoulder their transgressions to grant their souls access to heaven. Orphaned and friendless, May must make her way in a dangerous and cruel world she barely understands ... "The Handmaid's Tale" meets "Alice in Wonderland" in this gripping and imaginative historical novel.