The Evangelical’s Daughter

One day, Frankie Roberts hears a preacher pronounce that a woman’s place is in the home, not in the pulpit. But this mother of four daughters and wife of a pastor in New Jersey won’t hear of it; she knows she has a special calling. In 1959, Frankie packs up her children, leaves her husband, and moves to Sioux City, Iowa, to start a ministry. In this memoir, one of Frankie’s daughters, the author Debra Roberts Torres-Reyes narrates her mother’s story.

Availing herself of both humor and honesty, Torres-Reyes describes being raised by Pentecostal Holiness Ministers and living with a fanatical preacher mother who inflicts both physical and verbal abuse on her offspring. The author reflects on how the church’s views and actions—speaking in tongues, casting out demons, and dancing in the spirit—caused her to grow up with poor self-esteem, to suffer panic attacks, and to live in constant mental and emotional torment about The Rapture, demons, the devil, and hell.

The Evangelical’s Daughter describes how Torres-Reyes ultimately breaks out of a self-destructive lifestyle, joins the military, and later attends college and law school, finally becoming an attorney. This is one woman’s true story about finding God and leaving religious dogma behind.