My father had thirteen wives and more than fifty children . . .This is the haunting memoir of Anna LeBaron, daughter of the notorious polygamist and murderer Ervil LeBaron. Ervil’s criminal activity kept Anna and her siblings constantly on the run from the FBI. Often starving, the children lived in a perpetual state of fear–and despite their numbers, Anna always felt alone. Would she ever find a … ever find a place she truly belonged? Would she ever be anything other than the polygamist’s daughter?Filled with murder, fear, and betrayal, The Polygamist’s Daughteris the harrowing, heart-wrenching story of a fatherless girl and her unwavering search for love, faith, and a place to call home.
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Read 1.15.2021
This is the 6th book I have read about the LeBaron family and the web of lies and deceit and poverty and the like that they all suffered at the hands of the polygamist leaders they followed, and you’d think that by #6, there would be nothing to be shocked about. You’d be wrong.
Anna LeBaron, daughter of Ervil LaBaron [one of the nastiest of all the leaders and the one that called himself the “true prophet”] grew up in poverty and extreme fundamentalism and fear. She grew up in the care of others [usually other sister wives, some who were none to friendly and treated Anna and her siblings as nothing but cheap labor and a hindrance to them], rarely seeing both her mother and father. She grew up with very little love and caring and was constantly hungry and afraid. And then as a teenager, all that was just magnified when learning about the “blood covenants” that her father ordered against members of his own family [among many others] that would disagree with him and/or leave the cult that he ruled with an iron fist. And would end up taking several members of her own family that had not only taken her in and helped her escape the cult, they also taught her of love and acceptance and a life without fear.
She writes fairly well – it is a pretty straight-forward story and at no point does she try and sugar coat it. She is also honest about what it has taken for her to heal and move forward with her life. And I am just amazed that she is even a normal functioning human being.
I think that Ervil’s kids have it the worst though, to be honest. He was a horrible man who did horrible things and to have to resolve that in your own head and then with members of other families where he inflicted pain and suffering must be on the hardest things one would ever have to do. I cannot imagine where one gets the strength to even begin to start that. Yet, she has and I commend both of them for trying to put the past behind them and heal.
These books are just so sad – even the ones where everything is resolved, they are still just so sad. I am not sure how any of them ever ended up with normal lives. And yet some of them have. Amazing.
A simply amazing writing about triumph over tragedy. The enemy is always working to hold us hostage, but Anna shows how God’s love can infiltrate our hearts and pull us through any and all circumstances triumphantly. I cried, I celebrated, I was fully engaged from the first page to the last. A must read that will stay with you; and connect with so many that need to hear this message.
Stirring and beautiful story of how God restores what the enemy attempts to destroy.
The author of this book opens up and tells the world what it was like growing up in a cult. You learn a lot about the church and her dad.