Books like Escape by Carolyn Jessop

Carolyn Jessop’s memoir offers a stark first‑person look inside the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‑Day Saints (FLDS), a radical offshoot of the Mormon Church that practiced plural marriage along the Arizona‑Utah border. Coerced into an arranged marriage at eighteen with a man thirty‑two years her senior who already had three wives, Carolyn endured decades of psychological abuse, financial control, and the constant power struggle among the wives. She remained a school teacher, yet her husband dictated every aspect of her life, from where she lived to who could use her earnings. Fearing for her eight children’s future, she orchestrated a risky escape in 2003, leaving with only $20. Her escape was unprecedented—she became the first woman to gain full custody of her children in a legal battle against the FLDS. By reporting church abuses to the Utah attorney general, she helped bring attention to the FLDS and contributed to the arrest of its infamous leader, Warren Jeffs. Her story exposes the oppressive reality of a religious sect that treated women as property and children as tools, while highlighting the courage required to flee such a closed community.

First publish date: 2007