Product Description

In the closed world of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, Carolyn Jessop was forced to obey her controlling husband’s every demand. She had no money, no power and existed as one of six wives battling for her husband’s attention. For seventeen years Carolyn suffered for the sake of her children. She tried to protect them as the cult’s new leader, Warren Jeffs, started marrying girls off younger and younger. But when Carolyn discovered that her twelve-year-old daughter had spent three days at Jeffs’ home, she knew she had to do everything in her power to take her children and flee. At 35 Carolyn escaped. This is her harrowing - and ultimately triumphant - story

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13913 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Daily Mail
So compelling. An incredible memoir

Elle
Riveting, compulsive reading

About the Author
Carolyn Jessop was born in 1968 and raised in the largest community of the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints in the US. She spent 17 years in a polygamous marriage to one of the most powerful men in the FLDS community, before escaping. She lives in Utah with her children.

Customer Reviews

Thought provoking.
I actually found this book at work and when I read the cover it intrigued me. I'm not a great fan of the 'woe is me....life has been so bad but look how I've turned it round' kind of books that seem to fill the shelves at the moment, but this story made me curious. What a rollercoaster of a read....I seriously could not wait to have an early night to read a few more chapters! Carlolyn Jessop was born into the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints. When she was 18 she had an arranged marriage to a man old enough to be her father...and by the time she was in her early 30's she had 8 children! Because I'm not in the slightest bit religious, I could not grasp how anyone would not see through the abuse and brainwashing that was part of Carolyns daily life....but as she explains, this is just how it was and she had been brought up not to question but to accept! Carolyns saving grace was that she managed to get an education before the groups 'Prophet of God' forced her into a marriage with Merril Jessop...a well known member of the FLDS. Carolyn became one of his 6 wives (he went on to marry more after her escape!)The wives were seen as the husbands 'property' and the belief was that if you served your husband well, he would take you into the next life with him into his celestial Kingdom. Barking!!!!!Carolyn and her children suffered mental and physical abuse throughout her marriage....and as time went on Warren Jeffs became the leader. The rules began to spiral into madness....mothers were not even allowed to cuddle their own children, pet dogs were all rounded up and killed, if a child became ill it was seen as punishment to the mother for being a bad wife....it goes on and on.When Carolyns 7th child develops cancer and has to be regularly hospitalized, she begins to see what life outside the community is really like and that non-believers are not all bad people. She gets her first taste of freedom. Warren Jeffs then begins to marry girls off younger and younger and Carolyn discovers that her 12 year old daughter has been to stay at his house. She realises that her husband would have no qualms in marrying his daughter off to Warren Jeffs to gain a higher status in the community, and this finally sets her mind onto escaping. But the battle doesn't end there....she has to fight for custody of the children. She suffers from PTSD and has to start from scratch with no money, no job and on the run from her husband who is outraged at her disobedience. Her children have been brainwashed and believe life outside the community will mean punishment in the afterlife and she has to deal with all this. Eventually Carolyn wins custody and Warren Jeffs is jailed for sodomizing young boys and raping underage girls as young as 5 or 6.
This book is a truly amazing story and my review will never do it justice. Get it and give it a go....you won't be disappointed.

Moving
I purchased this book on a total whim. I have never been more moved by the written word than I was by this book. Carolyn Jessop is without a doubt one of the rare modern day heroes of this world, and what really shone throughout this book was that despite her endless personal struggles and abuses she was continuously concerned about the welfare of others, even those people who had mistreated her. She fought battle after battle to stand up for what is right in the face of such horrific mental, emotional and physical traumas, and despite having to continuously struggle she was still able to get her message out there and see that justice prevailed.

Carolyn Jessops writing is exceptional. Her words flow in a way that truly engages her readers into the world that she lived in for 17 years; we feel a fraction of what she must have felt, we are able to clearly picture the chaos and feel the fear that must have been a daily part of her life for so long.

On the surface whenever the outside world was ever invited to view the behaviours of the polygamous sects I was always led to believe that everyone was happy with their way of life, that all of their children, despite there being so many, were happy and thriving. It was not until I read this book that you truly realise that perhaps a lot of what we are occasionally privy to is a cleverly constructed facade to keep away a world that they are taught to believe is full of evil influences and evil people.

What I found to be most moving about this work is that despite the abuse that Carolyn Jessop experienced and witnessed, and despite the constant barrage of brainwashing propaganda about the outside world, she was always willing to open her heart to others, to trust and to care about their wellbeing as well as her own.

Carolyn Jessops sole drive throughout this work is the protection of her children, and despite suffering at the hands of her "family", despite numerous complications from her pregnancies, and despite facing times of near starvation and the detrimental effects of little to no health care, she was able to use her wits,instincts and her faith that good would prevail, to not only escape the only world she had ever know, but also to learn how to survive in the real world, and to ultimately help in putting a chink in the armour of the crumbling world in which she had been raised.

This book is not for the faint-hearted, it is a real story of courage and living moment to moment, a story of bravery and the extents a mother will go to to protect her children. This stirring work will truly make you stop, smell the roses of your life and be thankful for everything you have around you.

Stranger (and more disturbing) than fiction
My wife bought this book. Just the sort of thing she would read, I thought. Then I picked it up myself, and was unable to put it down. The events and the personalities it describes are all true, yet barely credible. One wonders how such things can go on in a 'civilized' western country. Carolyn Jessop's upbringing in the FLDS faith, her forced polygamous marriage, the harrowing accounts of her treatment by her husband and his favourite wife, and her eventual escape are calculated to make your blood boil. At every page I was asking myself: How could this happen? How could anyone allow themselves to be treated in this way? How could anyone be duped into believing such utter garbage? Why did no-one do anything about it? Strange but true. You can read newspaper accounts about the FLDS and its prophet Warren Jeffs that will bear it out. This may be a book of the 'hasn't my life been awful' genre, but it is one of the better ones. Not a literary masterpiece; it just tells the story as it happened. The book and the events it describes are very recent. I would imagine that its author is still in the process of recovering from her old life and discovering her new one. If she were to write an update from a longer perspective in a few years from now, I would certainly wish to read it.