Escape

ESCAPE: Carolyn Jessop with Laura Palmer: Broadway Books: Nonfiction: 413 pgs.

One dark night in 2003, with $20 cash and eight children in tow, Carolyn Jessop fled for her life. She left behind the only world she knew, a polygamist community located along the Arizona-Utah border, and became the first woman to successfully leave the clutches of the compound with her children. After a frightening, bitter court battle, she also became the first woman ever granted full custody of her children in a dispute involving the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.

At 18 she was forced to become the sixth wife of 50-year-old Merril Jessop. Uncharacteristically permitted to attend college and work as a teacher outside the home she shared with the other wives, she had to turn her paycheck over to her husband. Withstanding marital rape, she conceived eight children all the while hoping she would gain better treatment for her and her children.

Jessop's memoir portrays females' lives as those lived without basic human rights. They are objectified, treated as property, subject to mind control and perpetually subservient to the patriarchy. Her story is well-written, powerfully poignant and ultimately pertinent given recent news events in Texas.

DLD