The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

This book is a YA zombie novel. It is written in the first-person perspective by Mary, a teenage girl who lives in a small Iron Age village. For generations, this village has been surrounded by a remnant of industrial technology: a chain-link fence. It is the only thing that protects it from the Unconsecrated -- the undead who crave the flesh of the living. Mary knows, from legends passed down from generation to generation, that once the living ruled the earth and that humanity was not confined in this enclosure inside the Forest of Hands and Teeth.

She and the other villagers are ruled by the Sisterhood, a female Christian-like religious order that organizes the defense and propagation of the human race. But Mary begins to suspect that the Sisterhood has been keeping secrets about what lies beyond the forest.

The only significant failing of the book is that Mary thinks like a modern teenage girl, not like a person whose entire culture has been isolated for hundreds of years. But as this is a YA novel, that is a forgivable error. All in all, it is a good novel, and the final battle scene was thrilling.