The author describes growing up within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, her public criticism of the church, and her difficult decision to leave the Mormon church to pursue her own search for spirituality.
While searching for her true self and for the way to meet the needs of her personal sense of spirituality, an orphaned teenaged girl joins a Shaker community in mid-nineteenth century New England and learns about a new religion called Mormonism.
As a twelve-year-old Welsh immigrant carries a motherless baby along the Mormon Trail in 1856, she comes to love the baby as her own and fear the day the baby's father will reclaim her.
my story of growing up in a polygamous sect, becoming a teenage bride, and breaking free of Warren Jeffs
Wall, Elissa
2008
Elissa Wall discusses her life growing up as a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, the trials she endured after the polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs forced her to marry her cousin at the age of fourteen, events that led to her leaving the church, and her decision to testify against Jeffs when he was brought to trial on charges of arranging marriages between adult male followers and underage girls.
After the death of her abusive father and loss of her beloved Ethan and their unborn child, Pattyn runs away, desperately seeking peace, as her younger sister, a sophomore in high school, also tries to put the pieces of her life back together.
