Tag Archives: Autobiography

Sober Mercies by Heather Harpham Kopp

Posted on by
Reply

Synopsis:
Subtitled: How Love Caught Up with a Christian Drunk.

Review:
Sober Mercies is first and foremost an addiction memoir, showing the secrecy and the deception and the havoc wreaked by Heather Harpham Kopp’s need to drink as much alcohol as possible every single day.

What makes her story stand apart is that Kopp was (and still is) a professing Christian at the time of her addiction. She believed that alcoholism was only a sin problem, not an addiction or a disease, and so she resisted seeking help. She didn’t know why she couldn’t just repent her way out of her problem. She was editing books on Christian theology but wasn’t seeing her beliefs translate into her life at all. I think this is a common problem for all Christians, especially in the evangelical tradition. We have orthodoxy (“right doctrine”) but not orthopraxy (“right living”), and I think the relentless focus on individualism in popular evangelicalism is a big reason. We’re told that Christianity is a personal relationship with Jesus and so we get lost in our personal experience, instead of being taught that Christianity is first and foremost about what Jesus Christ did on the cross, vanquishing sin and making it possible for us to be right with God. As long as it’s all about us, we’re doomed to see how we fail every day. That’s what happened to Kopp. I wish she had spent more time showing how her perspective on God and herself changed because that’s where the magic in a believer’s life happens. She sort of rushed the ending and I wanted more because I she did a fantastic job getting me invested in her story.

Tiger Babies Strike Back by Kim Wong Keltner

Posted on by
Reply

Synopsis:
Subtitled: “How I Was Raised by a Tiger Mom but Could Not Be Turned to the Dark Side.”

Review:
My interest in Tiger Babies Strike Back petered out in the first 30 pages. Kim Wong Keltner is a good writer but I just grew weary of the memoir aspect of the story. I know it’s not entirely fair to judge the book you wish you were reading, but honestly I really wished she had talked to more families in an effort to present a nuanced picture of Chinese American families in all their complexity, instead of solely telling her own story. But take that with a grain of salt–memoir is one of my least favorite genres.

Rapture Practice by Aaron Hartzler

Posted on by
Reply

Synopsis:
A sheltered young man realizes he needs to decide what he really believes in.

Review:
Aaron Hartzler is witty and perceptive, and Rapture Practice is an insider’s look at the wacky outskirts of evangelicalism. I didn’t stay very interested in the memoir aspect, mainly because as I’ve mentioned before I’m not crazy about the genre, but I did like the way Hartzler told his story. He’s a good writer, to be sure.

And the review would have been longer, but my site was hacked and I spent all my blogging time changing my password through the backend. As Henry on Oswald would say, it’s “time to go to bed.”

Vow: A Memoir of Marriage and Infidelity by Wendy Plump

Posted on by
Reply

Synopsis:
A journalist details the multiple affairs that ended her marriage.

Review:
The story told in Vow is a train wreck. Wendy Plump and her husband pretty much destroyed their marriage with infidelity on both sides, ending finally when her husband had a baby with another woman. For all her candor, I never felt like Plump got to the heart of why she did what she did, or responded the way she did, or how she feels about the endeavor of marriage in general. I understand that you can’t boil someone’s life choices down to a set of pat answers, but at a certain point I just felt trapped inside a vortex of emotion and desire and need and couldn’t find a way to escape. That said, I appreciated her honesty and willingness to tell the truth even when it made her look bad.

Many thanks to Bloomsbury USA for the review copy.

Fleeing Fundamentalism by Carlene Cross

Posted on by
4

Synopsis:
The wife of a fundamentalist pastor details her years of abuse at the hands of her hypocritical husband.

Review:
A friend of mine recommended Fleeing Fundamentalism after hearing that I’d been digging into books on polygamy. Honestly, these kinds of stories are the only kinds of memoirs I want to read–stories about women dealing with extreme personal situations. I definitely appreciated Carlene Cross’s insight into her particular situation, but as is generally the case I was disappointed in the theology-lite. Sadly, Cross came to reject all of Christianity because of the heinous abuses her husband meted out to her, and so she didn’t look to any Christian sources to combat the bad theology she was taught. She lumps all of Christianity in with the twisted version she was taught, and that makes me sad.

Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness by Scott Jurek and Steve Friedman

Posted on by
Reply

Synopsis:
The memoir of ultramarathon champion Scott Jurek, who recently set a record for running almost 168 miles in only 24 hours.

Review:
Ultramarathoners are crazy–running races that are 50, 100, 150 miles long, pushing themselves well past the point of insanity. And Scott Jurek is even crazier than most. In Eat and Run, Jurek describes how being a vegan (and mostly raw) has been his secret of success. With running tips and recipes interwoven with his racing history as a champion, the books readable and compelling on many levels. I am a big fan of running, though I’m not doing it right now myself, and I love reading about people pushing themselves to achieve things that seem inhuman. Superfast Husband doesn’t think most of it is possible, but I was persuaded by reading what he had to say.

Many thanks to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the review copy.

The Third Floor by Judi Loren Grace

Posted on by
Reply

Synopsis:
It’s 1962 and a 15-year-old girl is spending the next 4 months in a home for unwed mothers, waiting to give up her baby.

Review:
The Third Floor was an emotional read for me. As a mom my heart went out for Judi and her struggle. I can’t imagine having to give up my child. And then as a mom of daughters I would just hope that if I were ever faced with this situation I would handle it better than Judi’s family did. I really loved this book until the overlong wrap up at the end. Young Judi’s journey was so touching and poignant but I was less engaged by the rest of her life story.

Many thanks to Jetstream Publishing for the review copy.

Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free by Elissa Wall

Posted on by
Reply

Synopsis:
Elissa Wall escaped polygamy and the FLDS after being forced by the prophet Rulon Jeffs to marry her first cousin at the age of 14.

Review:
I seriously can’t stop reading about Mormon fundamentalism. Stolen Innocence told yet another story of a girl’s life ruined by the out-of-control men who get to do whatever they want with impunity.

Escape by Carolyn Jessop

Posted on by
Reply

Synopsis:
A true story of a woman who escaped polygamy with her eight children, despite being the plural wife of one of the most powerful men in the FLDS.

Review:
Carolyn Jessop’s story is fascinating and inspiring. As a mom myself, I was moved by her love for her children and her tenacity at making the system work for her. In Escape,
she takes readers through her harrowing journey from true believing sister wife to crusader for justice.

Church of Lies by Flora Jessop

Posted on by
Reply

Synopsis:
After escaping from in the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints, Flora Jessop has devoted her life to rescuing other girls from polygamy and abuse in the cult.

Review:
Church of Lies is an incredibly powerful story. The beginning chapters describing Flora Jessop’s abuse at the hands of her father were harrowing and there was a lot I had to skip over because it was a bit too explicit. But when the story turned to Flora’s attempts to work within and outside of the system to rescue girls from polygamy, I fell in love with her courage and spirit and passion.

The Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints are a sect/cult of Mormonism led by Warren Jeffs, the Prophet. He controls his followers through fear and indoctrination, teaching them from childhood that they will go to hell if they don’t do what he says. The men curry favor with him, otherwise they will be kicked out and their wives and children reassigned to someone else. Of course, they’re all also waiting for Jeffs to die in the hopes that they can become the next Prophet.

There are some warring branches of the FLDS, as I learned in Daughters of Zion. It’s hard to tell them apart because they share only a few last names among them. Flora Jessop was part of the same group as Carolyn Jessop, but she was born a Jessop instead of marrying one like Carolyn. Their group lives in the “twin cities” in Arizona near Colorado, where everyone is FLDS. That means that there’s no safe place for the abused kids to turn to for help. They’re beaten at school, raped at home, the girls are married off at 14 and the boys kicked out of the community because they’re competition for the older men who want to collect wives for celestial glory. And over and above them all is Warren Jeffs, child molester, rapist, and demagogue.

That Flora Jessop could leave the FLDS is amazing–but her story is even more incredible. She gets involved with a network of safe houses that help girls who want to leave the FLDS, only to find that the police and CPS just don’t understand the depth of depravity of the indoctrination foisted upon these poor kids. The girls have no clue they have any civil rights at all. The boys who are allowed to stay are told they are mini prophets and after age 12 all women have to obey them. All of them live in poverty. Physical abuse runs both ways, and many of the children are molested. It’s just so psychologically complex.

Near the end of the book, Flora touches on some of her spiritual journey, wrestling with the concept of God and her inability to move past her hatred of the God she was taught about in the FLDS. There is a truly amazing scene near the end of the book between Flora and her rapist father that points to tremendous spiritual growth on Flora’s part. I wish she had time to tell us more about that part of things, because I really hope that Flora finds healing on that level, too.