The Polygamist's Daughter

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY JAN 23, 2017

In this somewhat fractured memoir, LeBaron, daughter of Ervil LeBaron (the infamous, murderous leader of an offshoot group of Mormon polygamists), recounts her early life and eventual escape in the 1980s from the cultish culture of her birth. Born to one of Ervil wives, she rarely saw her father, as the family frequently and suddenly moved to avoid federal agents. After spending a year in Mexico with clan members away from her mother, she returned to Houston. The death of her father galvanized her resolve to flee the controlling, abusive group, which she managed with the help of a half-sister. The last third of the memoir recounts her life post-polygamy, including being born again and eventually raising her own children. She includes striking vignettes about her deprivation, such as subsisting on mayonnaise and refried bean sandwiches or working long hours scraping dead roaches from used appliances, and alarming anecdotes about how the family survived, including using smaller children to rummage through locked clothing donation dumpsters. Unfortunately, the book lacks a clear overarching structure and tends towards disconnected memories without much detail on the beliefs and practices of the group.