In this searing memoir of survival in the spirit of Stolen
Innocence, the daughter of Warren Jeffs, the self-proclaimed Prophet of
the FLDS Church, takes you deep inside the secretive polygamist Mormon
fundamentalist cult run by her family and how she escaped it.
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 federal law, Jeffs arranged
marriages between under-age girls and middle-aged and elderly members of
his congregation. In 2006, he gained international notoriety when 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 blows the lid off this taciturn community
made famous by Jon Krakauer's bestselling Under the Banner of Heaven
to offer a harrowing look at her 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, Jeffs' first plural daughter by his
second of more than fifty wives, eventually found the courage to leave
the church in 2015. But Breaking Free is not only her story--Rachel's
experiences illuminate those of her family and the countless others who
remain trapped in the strange world she left behind.
A shocking and mesmerizing memoir of faith, abuse, courage, and freedom,
Breaking Free is an expose of religious extremism and a beacon of hope
for anyone trying to overcome personal obstacles.
