MUST READ!!!!
I could not put this book down. I am never like this....I was even reading it in the car(I get car sick, i never read in a moving vehicle)....This woman deserves a HUGE metal.I hope she makes some money off this book because lord knows she deserves every single penny.

A view into another world
Fascinating read. Found I couldn't put it down as I learned so much about this lifestyle that I knew nothing about apart from news articles. As you read it, its hard to believe that is happening in modern day America. Recommended as a book that will fascinate yet horrify you. I commend the author for doing what she has done to give her children a better life.

A, Riveting Semi-Autobiographical Good Read
I rarely read autobiographies or biographies, but I was perusing this at the store and read the first chapter and then decided I had to buy it.

This book is a more intimate glimpse into the FLDS. I read a few other reviews and it seems like there's a lot of shock. I wasn't shocked, but when I read it, it was more like morbid curiousity. I grew up with a few LDS friends and actually have some friends in the greater Salt Lake area. Other than a few oddities in their religion, I never thought Mormons were freaks. People will find whatever strangeness they want to find in any religion. Is it a cult? By it's definition, maybe. Growing up in the San Francisco bay area, I've seen freakier things that have nothing to do with religion.

My Mormon friends in Utah, will sometimes poke fun at the fundamentalists or express sadness. I get the impression that they're sort of a stain on mainstream Mormonism. It's like regular folks in Utah, know it, but don't actively seek the fundamentalists to expose them. Much like illegal immigrants here in California. We know they're there. They know they're involved in something they shouldn't be, but the legal process makes it so difficult to root them out and they hide behind laws that weren't meant to shield them.

Anyhow, this is more like an intimate portrait of the woman who lived this life and how she endured it. It's the story of how she grew up brainwashed and bought into it. Then found herself an advocate against it, but she needed to plan her escape into normal society.

As sad as her story is, I fear there is much more like this in the rest of the U.S. This is just one woman's story that was recently sensationalized because of the juicy parts.

I did find it interesting that she was a wardrobe consultant for the show Big Love and that she ended up with a guy who was Jewish.

I only hope that her life is headed in a good direction. Good read. I had trouble putting it down because it was well-written. It would have been nicer to see more photos, but it is what it is. A very sad story with a good ending.

impossible to understand
what an unbelievably horrible way for a woman to have to live. they must be born with NO backbone whatsoever.

those men should all be locked up where they cant hurt anyone else much less keep on reproducing themselves.

what a disgrace to the feminine gendar.

very readable but sickening book.

Interesting but poorly written
While Carolyn's tale is interesting, horrifying and even compelling the story suffers from poorly constructed sentences, BORING redundancies and just plain bad writing. WHERE was this woman's editor?? If it were not for the fascinating insight into this secretive society I wouldn't have been able to trudge through the whole thing. Alas, the story itself saved the book from it's writer.