In the novel A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews, a teenage girl named Nomi Nickel has just lost her sister and mother to an unforgiving and judgmental town. Her father Ray is a high believer in the town’s religion and way of life. This oppression stunts human potential, but with faith and love can grow and fulfill your potential. Nomi has believed in the town’s way of life until her sister and mother leave Nomi and father. Nomi starts to question her beliefs and her place in the town. In the beginning of the book when Nomi is on the town’s main street and says “Main street is bookended by two fields of that never grow a crop” (Toews 47) this is symbolically showing just how bad the oppression in the town really is that even the plants
