Triumph

Jessop, Carolyn. Triumph: Life After the Cult. New York: Random House, 2010.

Carolyn Jessop grew up in the FLDS (Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints) cult, a subset of the Mormon faith that still practices polygamy. When her oldest daughter was fourteen and about to be forced into a marriage with a much older man, Carolyn chose to flee the cult. Not only did she escape the cult, but she also rescued her children and gained sole custody of them. The story of her flight from the FLDS is chronicled in her book Escape.

Triumph tells the next chapter of the story. Acting on a phone tip, the police in Texas raided a large FLDS compound and removed over four hundred children on the grounds that these children had been abused. Jessop was involved in helping the relief workers to understand the FLDS mindset as well as petitioning that these children not be returned to life in the cult.

I did enjoy this book, but not as much, I think, as I would have enjoyed Escape. Tales of court battles and television interviews are not so interesting to me as what actually happened with the children when they were yanked from the only life they had ever known. I was also interested in learning more about Jessop's own children and how they handled the transition to what most of us would call a "normal" life.

In any case, this book was interesting. It is definitely worth checking out of the library.