2022 GoodRead Challenge – Book 17 of 50
The Witness Wore Red: The 19th Wife Who Brought Polygamous Cult Leaders to Justice written by Rebecca Musser with M. Bridget Cook. I believe at the end of 2018 I picked up a book called “Breaking Free: How I Escaped My Father-Warren Jeffs-Polygamy, and the FLDS Cult” written by Rachel Jeffs. I forget the reasoning behind it but this was the start of me watching clips and reading up about the story of Warren Jeffs. I went through a phase where I started to look into multiple cults such as NXIVM and the People Temple movement. I don’t like to read a lot of stories with graphic details about people doing things to other people. I don’t read about real life murders nor watch shows that talk about that. I have a few family members who love to watch those kind of stories. I even have to be careful watching certain shows due to the psychology behind it such as Criminal Minds. I made the mistake of staying in the room when someone watched a few episode of Criminal Minds and it messed with my head for a LONG time. I couldn’t see the one actor in any other roles without thinking about the story line. Anyway I am getting way off topic.
I’m sorry but this is my life right now but I heard about this book from a vlog – the woman went through a stage of reading books about the FLDS. I follow someone on YouTube who left the FLDS at 18 but he didn’t have any of these type of experiences that you read in these books. I listened to the book on Libby and I found it interesting. What I liked about the this book is how you got to hear a different side of what happened in Texas when they did the “raid” back in 2008. I won’t go into a lot of details but the author was married at the age of 19 to the prophet who was in his 80’s. She tells her story and why she decided to leave. The biggest thing is because she was married to the prophet she got to see the ins and outs of everything. She also had a lot of interaction with the son of the prophet who took over once he died. The son was Warren Jeffs and with every different sources I have read/listen too has said the same thing – things got weird and strike once he took over. I don’t really remember much from the 2008 raid but I do remember seeing things in the news about children being separated from their mothers and I thought that was crazy. The book gives you the ins of what was going on during those time and why things played out the way they did. She played a part in these big cases.
Now this may not make much sense if you haven’t read this book but when I was listening to it I felt something was off about her brother and the man she ended up marrying (they later got a divorce). If I remember correctly the brother was forced out due to his safety and the guy she married left with her. The two guys both grew up in this environment and even though they were not living that lifestyle it felt that their attitude and behavior still lined up with what they were taught. Men are taught that women do not have a voice, they have to keep sweet, and they are pretty much property. I wonder what ever happened to the brother but I did see he wrote a book that he self-published saying how his sister book was false. It’s no longer available and I read some of the reviews and it sounds like he was treating his sister the way she would of been treated if he was still apart of the FLDS. He was trying to discredit her and saying she made it all up. I read that he didn’t even finish her book but he wrote a book to discredit it…? Other members of FLDS did the same thing especially during the raid and trails of the men. Her now ex-husband seemed like he wanted to have multiple wives or at least have other choices. He also treated her a certain way when she was trying to help the officers in Texas.
Her sister wrote a book about her experience and I plan on listening to it. I am not sure when I’ll get to it but it’s been added to my “want to read” list on GoodRead. I’m afraid her book might be a little more graphic on what happened to her since I kind of gathered her experience was a little more traumatic than the author of this book mostly because she was married to a younger (but older man).
Thriving in Chaos 