Escape


Book Description

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.




Escaped from the Mormons


Book Description




Unveiling Grace


Book Description

A gripping story of how an entire family, deeply enmeshed in Mormonism for thirty years, found their way out and found faith in Jesus Christ. For thirty years, Lynn Wilder, once a tenured faculty member at Brigham Young University, and her family lived in, loved, and promoted the Mormon Church. Then their son Micah, serving his Mormon mission in Florida, had a revelation: God knew him personally. God loved him. And the Mormon Church did not offer the true gospel. Micah's conversion to Christ put the family in a tailspin. They wondered, Have we believed the wrong thing for decades? If we leave Mormonism, what does this mean for our safety, jobs, and relationships? Is Christianity all that different from Mormonism anyway? As Lynn tells her story of abandoning the deception of Mormonism to receive God's grace, she gives a rare look into Mormon culture, what it means to grow up Mormon, and why the contrasts between Mormonism and Christianity make all the difference in the world. Whether you are in the Mormon Church, are curious about Mormonism, or simply are looking for a gripping story, Unveiling Grace will strengthen your faith in the true God who loves you no matter what.







Triumph


Book Description

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.




Glory Carriers


Book Description

We were created to reflect something or Someone. What we behold, we reflect. The more we behold the Lord, the more we look like him--and the more we see his glory released into our lives and the lives of those around us. The glory of God is irresistible. Yet seeking to sense his presence or experience his glory for its own sake misses the point. His glory is the natural outpouring of a deep relationship with the Holy Spirit. In these pages, author and speaker Jennifer Eivaz shows how you can enter into more intimate fellowship with the Spirit of God, experience miraculous encounters, and begin to see more miracles, more deliverances, and more lives dramatically changed. Here is the inspiration you need to step into the supernatural and follow God's leading--and carry his glory to the darkest places and see his kingdom come.




Educated


Book Description

#1 NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER • One of the most acclaimed books of our time: an unforgettable memoir about a young woman who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University “Extraordinary . . . an act of courage and self-invention.”—The New York Times NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW • ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR • BILL GATES’S HOLIDAY READING LIST • FINALIST: National Book Critics Circle’s Award In Autobiography and John Leonard Prize For Best First Book • PEN/Jean Stein Book Award • Los Angeles Times Book Prize Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara’s older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home. “Beautiful and propulsive . . . Despite the singularity of [Westover’s] childhood, the questions her book poses are universal: How much of ourselves should we give to those we love? And how much must we betray them to grow up?”—Vogue NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post • O: The Oprah Magazine • Time • NPR • Good Morning America • San Francisco Chronicle • The Guardian • The Economist • Financial Times • Newsday • New York Post • theSkimm • Refinery29 • Bloomberg • Self • Real Simple • Town & Country • Bustle • Paste • Publishers Weekly • Library Journal • LibraryReads • Book Riot • Pamela Paul, KQED • New York Public Library




In the Grip of the Mormons


Book Description

Excerpt from In the Grip of the Mormons: By an Escaped Wife of a Mormon Elder Joseph smith, Senior, resided with his family in Windsor, Vermont. His four sons. Cradled at the foot of the Green Mountains, were left free to roam where they listed, and they explored the deep ravines and narrow gullies through which sing the mountain streams, now in soft murmurs, and anon dashing from crag to crag down their rocky beds. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.




Breaking Free


Book Description

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.