Broken Promise

Born into the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saint (FLDS) community of Bountiful, British Columbia, Jon Blackmore grew up believing that his church was the sole path to salvation, the only people destined to survive an impending apocalypse. But salvation required more than just faith. It also demanded perfect obedience to God’s chosen representatives on Earth—the church’s prophet and the local bishop.

Wielding absolute control over every aspect of their followers’ lives—spiritually, socially, and financially—Bishop Winston Blackmore, backed by God’s so-called prophet in the United States, ruled his followers with an iron fist. The people of Bountiful were driven into a life of near-enslavement, where refusal to comply with their leaders’ demands—which included surrendering children to forced labor or entering “plural marriages”—meant excommunication from the church and eternal damnation.

This memoir chronicles Jon’s journey from devout believer to conflicted follower to questioning skeptic as his leaders’ increasingly bold and outrageous antics cause his community and his church to unravel, putting the future of Jon’s own family in peril.