A pioneer in the Mormon exposé , Deborah Laake recounts her strict Mormon upbringing and two disastrous Mormon marriages that left her a pariah in the church. Laake chronicles her life from innocence to full initiation. Married at 19, she describes the voodoo-like rituals and behaviors revealed to her on her wedding day- and the male dominance, strange teachings, and " divine" revelations characteristic...

"A literary memoir of one woman's journey from wife to warrior, in the vein of breakout hits like Cheryl Strayed's Wild and Jeannette Walls's The Glass Castle. At thirty-six years old, Caitlin Myer is ready to start a family with her husband. She has leftbehind the restrictive confines of her Mormon upbringing and early sexual trauma and believes she is now living her happily ever after . . . when her body betrays her. In a single week, she suffers...

Presents a revelatory and deeply intimate exploration of the world of early Mormon women that draws on nineteenth-century diaries, letters, albums, minute-books, and quilts created by first-generation Latter-Day Saints.