Download or read book Daughter of the Saints written by Dorothy Allred Solomon and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2004-10-12 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this astonishing and poignant memoir, Solomon--daughter of Utah fundamentalist leader and polygamist Rulon C. Allred and his fourth plural wife, 28th of Allred's 48 children--tells of a childhood beset by secrecy and lies, by poverty, imprisonment, and government raids.

Download or read book Daughter of the Saints Growing Up in Polygamy written by Dorothy Allred Solomon and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2004-10-17 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Probably the best book ever written about polygamy. Neither an apologia nor an exposé."—Salt Lake City Tribune "I am the daughter of my father's fourth plural wife, twenty-eighth of forty-eight children—a middle kid, you might say." So begins this astonishing and poignant memoir of life in the family of Utah fundamentalist leader and naturopathic physician Rulon C. Allred. Since polygamy was abolished by manifesto in 1890, this is a story of secrecy and lies, of poverty and imprisonment and government raids. When raids threatened, the families were forced to scatter from their pastoral compound in Salt Lake City to the deserts of Mexico or the wilds of Montana. To follow the Lord's plan as dictated by the Principle, the human cost was huge. Eventually murder in its cruelest form entered when members of a rival fundamentalist group assassinated the author's father. Dorothy Solomon, monogamous herself, broke from the fundamentalist group because she yearned for equality and could not reconcile the laws of God (as practiced by polygamists) with the vastly different laws of the state. This poignant account chronicles her brave quest for personal identity. Originally published in hardcover under the title Predators, Prey, and Other Kinfolk.

Download or read book Stolen Innocence written by Elissa Wall and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Both creepy…and quite moving.” —New York Times Book Review “Wall’s story couldn’t be more timely.” —People Stolen Innocence is the gripping New York Times bestselling memoir of Elissa Wall, the courageous former member of Utah’s infamous FLDS polygamist sect whose powerful courtroom testimony helped convict controversial sect leader Warren Jeffs in September 2007. At once shocking, heartbreaking, and inspiring, Wall’s story of subjugation and survival exposes the darkness at the root of this rebel offshoot of the Mormon faith.

Download or read book The Polygamist s Daughter written by Anna LeBaron and published by NavPress. This book was released on 2017-03-21 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My father had thirteen wives and more than fifty children . . . This is the haunting memoir of Anna LeBaron, daughter of the notorious polygamist and murderer Ervil LeBaron. Ervil’s criminal activity kept Anna and her siblings constantly on the run from the FBI. Often starving, the children lived in a perpetual state of fear—and despite their numbers, Anna always felt alone. Would she ever find a place she truly belonged? Would she ever be anything other than the polygamist’s daughter? Filled with murder, fear, and betrayal, The Polygamist’s Daughter is the harrowing, heart-wrenching story of a fatherless girl and her unwavering search for love, faith, and a place to call home.

Download or read book In My Father s House written by Dorothy Allred Solomon and published by Voice in the American West. This book was released on 2009 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Solomon, daughter of Rulon Clark Allred, was twenty-eighth of forty-eight children born to her father's seven plural wives. She recounts growing up in a family often split up, living on the run or in hiding. Choosing monogamy for herself, she struggles to remain close to her polygamous family"--Provided by publisher.

Download or read book The Witness Wore Red written by Rebecca Musser and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rebecca Musser grew up in fear, concealing her family's polygamous lifestyle from the "dangerous" outside world. Covered head-to-toe in strict, modest clothing, she received a rigorous education at Alta Academy, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' school headed by Warren Jeffs. Always seeking to be an obedient Priesthood girl, in her teens she became the nineteenth wife of her people's prophet: 85-year-old Rulon Jeffs, Warren's father. Finally sickened by the abuse she suffered and saw around her, she pulled off a daring escape and sought to build a new life and family. The church, however, had a way of pulling her back in-and by 2007, Rebecca had no choice but to take the witness stand against the new prophet of the FLDS in order to protect her little sisters and other young girls from being forced to marry at shockingly young ages. The following year, Rebecca and the rest of the world watched as a team of Texas Rangers raided the Yearning for Zion Ranch, a stronghold of the FLDS. Rebecca's subsequent testimony would reveal the horrific secrets taking place behind closed doors of the temple, sending their leaders to prison for years, and Warren Jeffs for life. THE WITNESS WORE RED is a gripping account of one woman's struggle to escape the perverse embrace of religious fanaticism and sexual slavery, and a courageous story of hope and transformation.

Download or read book Breaking Free written by Rachel Jeffs and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-11-14 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this searing memoir of survival in the spirit of Stolen Innocence, the daughter of Warren Jeffs, the self-proclaimed Prophet of the FLDS Church, takes you deep inside the secretive polygamist Mormon fundamentalist cult run by her family and how she escaped it. Born into the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Rachel Jeffs was raised in a strict patriarchal culture defined by subordinate sister wives and men they must obey. No one in this radical splinter sect of the Mormon Church was more powerful or terrifying than its leader Warren Jeffs—Rachel’s father. Living outside mainstream Mormonism and federal law, Jeffs arranged marriages between under-age girls and middle-aged and elderly members of his congregation. In 2006, he gained international notoriety when the FBI placed him on its Ten Most Wanted List. Though he is serving a life sentence for child sexual assault, Jeffs’ iron grip on the church remains firm, and his edicts to his followers increasingly restrictive and bizarre. In Breaking Free, Rachel blows the lid off this taciturn community made famous by Jon Krakauer’s bestselling Under the Banner of Heaven to offer a harrowing look at her life with Warren Jeffs, and the years of physical and emotional abuse she suffered. Sexually assaulted, compelled into an arranged polygamous marriage, locked away in "houses of hiding" as punishment for perceived transgressions, and physically separated from her children, Rachel, Jeffs’ first plural daughter by his second of more than fifty wives, eventually found the courage to leave the church in 2015. But Breaking Free is not only her story—Rachel’s experiences illuminate those of her family and the countless others who remain trapped in the strange world she left behind. A shocking and mesmerizing memoir of faith, abuse, courage, and freedom, Breaking Free is an expose of religious extremism and a beacon of hope for anyone trying to overcome personal obstacles.

Download or read book Predators Prey and Other Kinfolk written by Dorothy Allred Solomon and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2003 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A memoir of life in the family of Utah fundamentalist leader, polygamist, and naturopathic physician Rulon C. Allred.

Download or read book The Secret Lives of Saints written by Daphne Bramham and published by Random House Canada. This book was released on 2009-04-03 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Secret Lives of Saints paints a troubling portrait of an extreme religious sect. These zealous believers impose severe and often violent restrictions on women, deprive children of education and opt instead to school them in the tenets of their faith, defy the law and move freely and secretly over international borders. They punish dissent with violence and even death. No, this sect is not the Taliban, but North America's fundamentalist Mormons. Daphne Bramham explores the history and ideas of this surprisingly resilient and insular society, asking the questions that surround its continued existence and telling the stories of the men and women whose lives are so entwined with it—both the leaders and the victims.

Download or read book Lost Boy written by Brent W. Jeffs and published by Crown. This book was released on 2009-05-19 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS), girls can become valuable property as plural wives, but boys are expendable, even a liability. In this powerful and heartbreaking account, former FLDS member Brent Jeffs reveals both the terror and the love he experienced growing up on his prophet’s compound—and the harsh exile existence that so many boys face once they have been expelled by the sect. Brent Jeffs is the nephew of Warren Jeffs, the imprisoned leader of the FLDS. The son of a prominent family in the church, Brent could have grown up to have multiple wives of his own and significant power in the 10,000-strong community. But he knew that behind the group’s pious public image—women in chaste dresses carrying babies on their hips—lay a much darker reality. So he walked away, and was the first to file a sexual-abuse lawsuit against his uncle. Now Brent shares his courageous story and that of many other young men who have become “lost boys” when they leave the FLDS, either by choice or by expulsion. Brent experienced firsthand the absolute power that church leaders wield—the kind of power that corrupts and perverts those who will do anything to maintain it. Once young men no longer belong to the church, they are cast out into a world for which they are utterly unprepared. More often than not, they succumb to the temptations of alcohol and other drugs. Tragically, Brent lost two of his brothers in this struggle, one to suicide, the other to overdose. In this book he shows that lost boys can triumph and that abuse and trauma can be overcome, and he hopes that readers will be inspired to help former FLDS members find their way in the world.

Download or read book Triumph written by Carolyn Jessop and published by Crown Archetype. This book was released on 2010-05-04 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A moving and inspirational true story of one woman’s life after fleeing the ultra-fundamentalist American religious sect featured in Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey—from the New York Times bestselling author of Escape “Triumph is thoughtful, intelligent, and engaging.”—Meg Wolitzer, bestselling author of The Interestings In 2003, Carolyn Jessop, a lifelong member of the extremist Mormon sect the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), gathered up her eight children, including her profoundly disabled four-year-old son, and escaped in the middle of the night to freedom. After detailing the shocking conditions of FLDS and her harrowing flight in her memoir, Escape, Carolyn reveled in her newfound identity as a bestselling author, a devoted mom, and a loving companion to the wonderful man in her life. She thought she had put her past firmly behind her. Then, on April 3, 2008, it came roaring back when the state of Texas, acting on a tip from a young girl who’d called a hotline alleging abuse, staged a surprise raid on the Yearning for Zion Ranch, a sprawling, 1700-acre compound near Eldorado, Texas, where the jailed FLDS “prophet” Warren Jeffs had relocated his sect’s most “worthy” members three years earlier. The ranch was being run by Merril Jessop, Carolyn’s ex-husband and one of the cult’s most powerful leaders. As a mesmerized nation watched the crisis unfold, Carolyn was called upon as an expert to help authorities understand the customs and beliefs of the extremist religious sect. In Triumph, Carolyn tells the real, harrowing story behind the raid and sets the record straight on much of the damaging misinformation that flooded the media in its aftermath. She recounts the setbacks and the successes, all while weaving in details of her own life in the years since her escape—including her budding role as a social critic and her struggle to make peace with her eldest daughter’s heartbreaking decision to return to the cult. An extraordinary woman who has overcome countless challenges and tragedies in her life, Carolyn shows us in this book how she has triumphed in spite of everything—and how you can, too, no matter what adversity you face.

Download or read book The Colony Faith and Blood in a Promised Land written by Sally Denton and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2022-06-28 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Publishers Weekly Summer Reads Selection “The Colony is one of the most gripping and disturbing true stories I’ve ever come across.” —Douglas Preston An investigation into the November, 2019 killings of nine women and children in Northern Mexico—an event that drew international attention—The Colony examines the strange, little-understood world of a polygamist Mormon outpost. On the morning of November 4, 2019, an unassuming caravan of women and children was ambushed by masked gunmen on a desolate stretch of road in northern Mexico controlled by the Sinaloa drug cartel. Firing semi-automatic weapons, the attackers killed nine people and gravely injured five more. The victims were members of the LeBaron and La Mora communities—fundamentalist Mormons whose forebears broke from the LDS Church and settled in Mexico when their religion outlawed polygamy in the late nineteenth century. The massacre produced international headlines for weeks, and prompted President Donald Trump to threaten to send in the US Army. In The Colony, bestselling investigative journalist Sally Denton picks up where the initial, incomplete reporting on the attacks ended, and delves into the complex story of the LeBaron clan. Their homestead—Colonia LeBaron—is a portal into the past, a place that offers a glimpse of life within a polygamous community on an arid and dangerous frontier in the mid-1800s, though with smartphones and machine guns. Rooting her narrative in written sources as well as interviews with anonymous women from LeBaron itself, Denton unfolds an epic, disturbing tale that spans the first polygamist emigrations to Mexico through the LeBarons’ internal blood feud in the 1970s—started by Ervil LeBaron, known as the “Mormon Manson”—and up to the family’s recent alliance with the NXIVM sex cult, whose now-imprisoned leader, Keith Raniere, may have based his practices on the society he witnessed in Colonia LeBaron. The LeBarons’ tense but peaceful interactions with Sinaloa deteriorated in the years leading up to the ambush. LeBaron patriarchs believed they were deliberately targeted by the cartel. Others suspected that local farmers had carried out the attacks in response to the LeBarons’ seizure of water rights for their massive pecan orchards. As Denton approaches answers to who committed the murders, and why, The Colony transforms into something more than a crime story. A descendant of polygamist Mormons herself, Denton explores what drove so many women over generations to join or remain in a community based on male supremacy and female servitude. Then and now, these women of Zion found themselves in an isolated desert, navigating the often-mysterious complications of plural marriage—and supported, Denton shows, only by one another. A mesmerizing feat of investigative journalism, The Colony doubles as an unforgettable account of sisterhood that can flourish in polygamist communities, against the odds.

Download or read book Under the Banner of Heaven written by Jon Krakauer and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2004-06-08 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the author of Into the Wild and Into Thin Air, this extraordinary work of investigative journalism takes readers inside America’s isolated Mormon Fundamentalist communities. • Now an acclaimed FX limited series streaming on HULU. “Fantastic.... Right up there with In Cold Blood and The Executioner’s Song.” —San Francisco Chronicle Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the renegade leaders of these Taliban-like theocracies are zealots who answer only to God; some 40,000 people still practice polygamy in these communities. At the core of Krakauer’s book are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a commandment from God to kill a blameless woman and her baby girl. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this appalling double murder, Krakauer constructs a multi-layered, bone-chilling narrative of messianic delusion, polygamy, savage violence, and unyielding faith. Along the way he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.

Download or read book God vs the Gavel written by Marci A. Hamilton and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-08-29 with total page 487 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Clergy sex abuse, polygamy, children dying from faith healing, companies that refuse to do business with same-sex couples, and residential neighborhoods forced to host homeless shelters - what do all of these have in common? They are all examples of religious believers harming others and demanding religious liberty regardless of the harm. This book unmasks those responsible, explains how this new set of rights is not derived from the First Amendment and argues for a return to common-sense religious liberty. In straightforward, readable prose, God vs. the Gavel: The Perils of Extreme Religious Liberty sets the record straight about the United States' move toward extreme religious liberty. More than half of this thoroughly revised second edition is new content, featuring a new introduction and epilogue and contemporary stories. All Americans need to read this book, before they or their friends and family are harmed by religious believers exercising their newfound rights.

Download or read book Escape written by Carolyn Jessop and published by Crown. This book was released on 2007-10-16 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The dramatic true story of one woman’s life inside the ultra-fundamentalist American religious sect featured in Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey—and her courageous flight to freedom with her eight children With a new epilogue by the author • “Escape provides an astonishing look behind the tightly drawn curtains of the FLDS church, one of the most secretive religious groups in the United States. A courageous, heart-wrenching account.”—Jon Krakauer 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 into and raised in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), the radical offshoot of the Mormon Church. 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 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. 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 the followers the right to make choices, brainwash children in church-run schools, and force women to be totally subservient to men. Against this background, Carolyn’s flight takes on an extraordinary, inspiring power. Not only did Carolyn 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, and later the conviction and sentence, of their notorious leader, Warren Jeffs.

Download or read book Illicit Monogamy written by William R. Jankowiak and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2023-03-28 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Angel Park is a Mormon fundamentalist polygamous community where plural marriages between one man and multiple women are common. In contrast to mainstream America’s idealization of the nuclear family and romantic love, its residents esteem notions of harmonious familial love, a spiritual bond that unites all family members. In their view, polygyny is not only righteous and sanctified—it is also conducive to communal life and social stability. Based on many years of in-depth ethnographic research in Angel Park, this book explores daily life in a polygamous community. William R. Jankowiak considers the plural family from the points of view of husbands, wives, and children, giving a balanced account of its complications and conflicts. He finds that people in polygynous marriages, especially cowives, experience an ongoing struggle to balance the longing for romantic intimacy with the obligation to support the larger family. They feel tension between deeply held religious convictions and the desire for emotional exclusivity, which can threaten the stability and harmony of the polygamous family. Men and women often form exclusive romantic pairs within plural marriages, which are tolerated if not openly acknowledged, showing the limits of the community’s beliefs. Jankowiak also challenges stereotypes of polygamous families as bastions of patriarchal power, showing the weight that interpersonal and social expectations place on men. Offering an unparalleled look at the complexity of a polygamous religious community, Illicit Monogamy also helps us reconsider relationships, love, and family dynamics across cultures and settings.

Download or read book Modern Polygamy in the United States written by Cardell Jacobson and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2011-03-09 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "At last some light, not just heat, about America's new polygamy scandal, its roots and ramifications. Both well reasoned and well written, this book shows the people and the principles at stake. It will change how you think about both."--Kathleen Flake, Associate Professor of American Religious History, Vanderbilt University --Book Jacket.