Author: Carolyn Jessop
Series/Standalone: Standalone
Genre: Nonfiction, Adult, Cults
Pages: 413
Publisher: Broadway Books
Year Published: 2007
Format: Audiobook
"The dramatic first-person account of the life inside an ultra-fundamentalist American religious sect, and one woman's courageous flight to freedom with her eight children.
When she was eighteen years old, Carolyn Jessop was coerced into an arranged marriage with a total stranger: a man thirty-two years her senior. Merril Jessop already had three wives. But arranged plural marriages were an integral part of Carolyn's heritage: She was born and raised in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), the radical offshoot of the Mormon Church that had settled in small communities along the Arizona-Utah border. Over the next fifteen years, Carolyn had eight children and withstood her husband's psychological abuse and the watchful eyes of his other wives who were locked in a constant battle for supremacy.
Carolyn's every move was dictated by her husband's whims. He decided where she lived and how her children would be treated. He controlled the money she earned as a school teacher. He chose when they had sex; Carolyn could only refuse- at her peril. For in the FLDS, a wife's compliance with her husband determined how much status both she and her children held in the family. Carolyn was miserable for years and wanted out, but she knew that if she tried to leave and got caught, her children would be taken away from her. No woman in the country had ever escaped from the FLDS and managed to get her children out, too. But in 2003, Carolyn chose freedom over fear and fled her home with her eight children. She had $20 to her name.
Escape exposes a world tantamount to a prison camp, created by religious fanatics who in the name of God, deprive their followers of the right to make choices, force women to be totally subservient to men, and brainwash children in church-run schools. Against this background, Carolyn Jessop's flight take on an extraordinary, inspiring power. Not only did she manage a daring escape from a brutal environment, she became the first woman ever granted full custody of her children in a contested suit involving the FLDS. And in 2006, her reports to the Utah attorney general on church abuses formed a crucial part of the case that led to the arrest of their notorious leader, Warren Jeffs."
My Rating: 5/5
When rating a nonfiction memoir of a story I base my rating on the narration style and the interest that the story held for me. I am not here to judge Carolyn's story or her life as I am not someone who lived it. I thought that this was a really interesting story to read about as someone who escaped the FLDS with all of her children and survived with someone so high up in the cult. For context, I am intrigued about cults, I think that the whole idea that people can be brainwashed into doing such unbelievable stuff fascinating to read about. I think the fact that this is a first account telling of the changes that the FLDS saw when Warren Jeffs began taking power, and how she managed to survive in a society where women are most often considered breeding stock. Does anyone have more suggestions about cult books, either fiction or nonfiction?
Thanks for reading,
Sidny
