Play Book Tag discussion

Escape – Caroline Jessop with Laura Palmer
Audio book read by Ann Marie Lee
3.5*** (rounded up)

From the book jacket: 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 that had settled in small communities along the Arizona-Utah border. 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.

My reactions:
I had heard of the FLDS, and even read a book about this cult (for that’s was the author calls it), but I found her first-hand account fascinating. About each time that I was ready to just shake my head and give up, Jessop reminded me that she had been completely indoctrinated into this way of life and that she truly believed she had no other options. Still, she began to see the flaws in the system.

And once Warren Jeffs began to take over leadership of the group and became increasingly paranoid and erratic in his edicts, Carolyn decided that she simply had to find another way of life. She was fortunate in that she had been able to attend college, and had taught for a time in a public school. She also had a couple of relatives who had left the sect and agreed to help her. Her escape is a harrowing story, worthy of any psychological thriller.

Ann Marie Lee does a fine job of performing the audio version of this memoir. She sets a good pace and really brings the narrative alive.




LINK to my review