There, she found little in the way of support networks for women escaping polygamy. Still, one night in 2003, Jessop snuck her eight children out of the house and fled to Salt Lake City. Furthermore, she knew that no woman had ever managed to get herself and her children safely away from the community. From her earliest childhood, when she played a game called “apocalypse,” she had been taught that God punished those who disobeyed his rules. So what kept Jessop in the community? Fear. Her occasional questioning of his views, however, earned his suspicion and the condescension and mistrust of her fellow wives. In a decidedly patriarchal culture, she often spoke her mind, and she talked Merril into letting her go to college. The author’s large family lived in grinding poverty, and Jessop was constantly subjected to humiliations at the hands of her husband, Merril. This painful memoir certainly doesn’t bear much resemblance to the polygamous fantasies of the HBO series Big Love. Born into the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints (FLDS), the author describes her life before, during and after her marriage at 18 to a 50-year-old man with three other wives.
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