The Polygamist's Daughter by Anna LeBaron (Book Review)

*Disclosure of material connection- I received a copy of the book from Tyndale Publisher's via their Tyndale Blogging Network in exchange for my honest thoughts. I was not required to write a positive review and all opinions stated are 100% my own.

About the book-

My father had thirteen wives and more than fifty children . . .This is the haunting memoir of Anna LeBaron, daughter of the notorious polygamist and murderer Ervil LeBaron. Ervil’s criminal activity kept Anna and her siblings constantly on the run from the FBI. Often starving, the children lived in a perpetual state of fear—and despite their numbers, Anna always felt alone. Would she ever find a place she truly belonged? Would she ever be anything other than the polygamist’s daughter?

Filled with murder, fear, and betrayal, The Polygamist’s Daughter is the harrowing, heart-wrenching story of a fatherless girl and her unwavering search for love, faith, and a place to call home.

My thoughts-

I am fascinated by what I can't understand, as I think many people are, and something lately has me particularly interested in the fundamentalist Mormon group that Anna LeBaron was once a part of, mainly because she was born into it. The good majority of the memoir is heartbreaking. This kid is dumped on other people in different places, never sees her parents, is forced to work for nothing and never knows what's going on. I could not imagine a childhood like that. She could wake up one day and be living in Texas only to be told that now she is moving to Mexico. Beyond the fact that her childhood without her parents must have been super confusing, her father lead the cult and is known to have committed or ordered many murders on people who he felt had a wavering faith or on rivals who he felt threatened by. Anna had only met this man a handful of times. Who knows how many other kids he had with how many other wives! Luckily, one of her older sisters and her husband who had left the cult adopted a parental role with Anna and took her under their wing. Sadly, there was still more tragedy to come, but I don't want to spoil the book for anyone so you will have to pick it up to see what happened. The Polygamist's Daughter will make you angry, sad, confused, and probably make you feel more empathetic to the people born into this cult. It will open your eyes and give you more of a direct look into what life was like for someone who didn't choose this path and the danger it can create trying to escape it. I recommend this book to people who enjoy memoirs.