The Testaments Summary

Three distinct voices come together to narrate the story, which revolves around their roles in a conspiracy to bring down the oppressive, patriarchal and theocratic government of a future nation. The first narrator, known as Aunt Lydia, is responsible for a manuscript titled "The Ardua Hall Holograph". The other two, Agnes and Daisy, provide their accounts through spoken testimonies. Aunt Lydia describes her rise to power in the harsh world of this dystopian society. Having previously been a judge, she is arrested and forced to watch as professional women are executed by the regime. Eventually, she is asked to cooperate with the regime and after a stint in solitary confinement, she concedes. She becomes one of the Founders of the Aunts, a group of women tasked with drafting and enforcing laws governing women. Using her position, she establishes an extensive surveillance system to gather evidence of wrongdoings by others.

Aunt Lydia's narrative intertwines with that of a child known as Baby Nicole, a child secretly taken out of this dystopian nation to Canada by her mother, a Handmaid. Aunt Lydia is keen on finding Baby Nicole, whose location is kept secret by a resistance group against the regime. Parallel to this, Agnes and Daisy, the other two narrators, share their experiences. Agnes, a native of the dystopian nation, has her comfortable life thrown into disarray when her mother dies and her father marries a vicious stepmother. She grows increasingly fearful of the treatment of women, a fear confirmed by witnessing the death of a Handmaid during childbirth. Encouraged by Aunt Lydia, Agnes seeks refuge among the Aunts and learns to read and write, becoming privy to top-secret information about the corruption among the nation's elite. Daisy, on the other hand, grows up in Toronto and after the death of her parents, learns from a mysterious woman, Ada, that she is the infamous Baby Nicole and her parents were just agents designated to protect her.

The plot intensifies when Daisy's real identity is revealed and she's coerced into infiltrating the regime to retrieve top-secret documents meant to bring down the government. Daisy, disguised as a convert, manages to sneak into the oppressive nation and ends up at Ardua Hall with Agnes. There, Aunt Lydia discloses herself as the source of information, implants a document filled with evidence of corruption into Daisy's arm, and reveals to Agnes and Daisy that they are sisters. Together, they navigate their way out of the nation and back to Canada. The exposure of the documents sets in motion the downfall of the oppressive regime. The narrative concludes with a historian discussing these testimonies in a distant future.