Published: 2008
Pages: 432
Genre: Nonfiction/Memoir
Like other people have said, the title of this book is a little misleading. The book does follow three half-sisters who grew up in the Children of God cult. However, they are in and out of each others lives and barely know each other, much less refuse to leave without each other. The first half of the book is divided into three large chunks with the background of each sister - Celeste, Kristina, and Juliana. The second half weaved the sisters' stories together and quickly changed narrators every few pages. I found the second half was really hard to keep track of everyone because their backgrounds, childhoods, and family members were very similar.
The content of the book itself was horrifying. All three sisters were subjected to all sorts of abuse, from sexual to emotional to physical. This particular cult is notorious for it's validation of pedophilia (they believe humans of any age should be free to express their love sexually with anyone else). It's very hard to read at times what they girls went through and how they struggled to adjust to normal society after being brainwashed their entire life.
The book gave a great overall history of the girls' lives from childhood to adulthood, but my only complaint was that the three girls all had very similar stories. I still can't tell you which things happened to which girls - they all just sort of blurred together into one single story. I'd recommend this book if you want a more personal memoir of the Children of God cult, and The Nameless by Natalie Sauret if you want a memoir with a more in-depth background of the cult itself.
No comments:
Post a Comment