Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs
by Elissa Wall, Lisa Pulitzer
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Book Summary Information
Author: Elissa Wall, Lisa PulitzerEdition: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Published: 2008-05-13
ISBN: 161683949X
Number of pages: 448
Publisher: William Morrow
Book Reviews of Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs
Book Review: A Brave, Brave Woman
Summary: 5 Stars
This is not a literary memoir in which momentous facts are set in artfully crafted narrative. Instead it is a straightforward chronological account of the life of a young woman living under the patriarchal despotism of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints in contemporary America and her successful struggle to win back her life.
I found it utterly compelling, even though I knew the bare outlines of how the head of the church, Warren Jeffs, went to prison in Utah for marrying Elissa off to her first cousin at the age of 14 and his complicity in her rape.
More than most people who have undergone traumatic childhoods, Elissa is able to reconstruct not only the events of her life and its daily rhythms but to recreate her sense of those events at the time they occurred to her. It's one of the best accounts I've read of the passivity that goes hand in glove with living under a despot considered divine. Jeffs and the favored husbands of this group literally hold the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven.
In spite of being denied a high school education (as many FLDS children are) Elissa finds the strength to resist her assigned husband and even find work to help support herself. She struggles to keep in touch with her various siblings as they scatter. Because the story unfolds in the order it occurred, the reader gets a sense of Elissa's development over time. In spite of often being abandoned time and again by her woefully inadequate parents, she is loyal, loving and compassionate.
I find it chilling that even though Jeffs is in prison, the FLDS community continues to thrive and oppress people across the Southwest and into Canada. There are other Elissas out there, we can be sure. But I'm happy this one is safe and sound at last.
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