Escape by Carolyn Jessop with Laura Palmer

Escape
Carolyn Jessop with Laura Palmer
Broadway
432 pages

"Let's play apocalypse!" was the cry that set us off and running through the orchard of my uncle Lee's house.
~ First sentence, chapter: Child's Play, Escape ~

Seventeen years after being forced into a polygamous marriage, Jessop escaped from the cultlike Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints with her eight children. She recounts the horrid events that led her to break free from the oppressive world she knew and how she has managed to survive since escaping, despite threats and legal battles with her husband and the Church.

This book was rivetting, consuming, gripping and, many times, soul wrenching. It's like watching a really horrific event. You know you should look away but you can't. You're drawn again and again to watch this unbelievably mesmerizing story unfold. It is mind-boggling and the polar opposite of how I was raised. Coming from what is considered a normal upbringing and stable environment in the FLDS community to be given as a wife (she uses the term property) to a man because it has been deemed by the Prophet that he is the one she recounts years and years of untold mental and some physical abuse not only directed towards herself and her children but practiced on a regular basis in this household. Sister wives turning on one another to secure their place in the household. Children turning on children and the other mothers to secure the love of their Father. She reveals the beliefs and practices the of the FLDS religion. You watch as a religion is turned into a cult by a fanatic. Yet through all this comes the hope and knowledge that it is possible to regain your dignity and your self-esteem. To make a life for yourself and family that is good, kind and loving.

If you want a better understanding and first-hand look inside the FLDS religion read this book especially with what is happening in Texas right now.