Breaking Free

A searing memoir of survival: the daughter of the jailed former leader of the FLDS Church reveals the true nature of the cult and how she escaped.


In this searing memoir of survival in the spirit of Stolen Innocence, the daughter of the self-proclaimed Prophet of the FLDS Church takes you deep inside the secretive, polygamist and fundamentalist Mormon cult run by her family and recounts her escape.


Born into the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Rachel Jeffs was raised in a strict patriarchal culture defined by subordinate sister wives and men they must obey. No one in this radical splinter sect of the Mormon Church was more powerful or terrifying than its leader Warren Jeffs--Rachel's father.


Living outside mainstream Mormonism and US law, Jeffs arranged marriages between under-age girls and middle-aged and elderly members of his congregation. In 2006 the FBI placed him on its Ten Most Wanted List. Though he is serving a life sentence for child sexual assault, Jeffs' iron grip on the church remains firm, and his edicts to his followers increasingly restrictive and bizarre.


In Breaking Free, Rachel describes her harrowing life with Warren Jeffs, and the years of physical and emotional abuse she suffered. Sexually assaulted, compelled into an arranged polygamous marriage, locked away in 'houses of hiding', as punishment for perceived transgressions, and physically separated from her children, Rachel eventually found the courage to leave the church in 2015. 


A shocking and mesmerising memoir of faith, abuse, courage and freedom, Breaking Free is an expose of religious extremism and a beacon of hope for anyone overcoming obstacles or trauma in their own lives.