The Polygamist’s Daughter

Title: The Polygamist's Daughter
Author: Anna LeBaron, Leslie Wilson
Narrator: Anna LeBaron
First Published: March 21, 2017
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
Pages: 302
Genre: Memoir, Non-Fiction, Religion, True Crime
Format: Audiobook
Source: Library
Rating:


Synopsis:

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 place she truly belonged? Would she ever be anything other than the polygamist’s daughter?

Filled with murder, fear, and betrayal, The Polygamist’s Daughter is the harrowing, heart-wrenching story of a fatherless girl and her unwavering search for love, faith, and a place to call home.

Review

The Polygamist’s Daughter is a book that I had deeply mixed feelings on. Anna’s story is incredible, heartbreaking, and provides some personal details about the LeBaron family, beyond the headlines. At the same time, the writing felt stilted, perhaps in part because it is co-written. There was something missing for me that was hard to put my finger on, but something about the writing made it hard for me to connect. Not to say that the book wasn’t engaging, I listened to it consistently over the course of a month on audio and I never felt bored by it.

The memoir narrates Anna’s precise memory of events as she lived it, and it at times felt almost like fiction, like Anna was a character in a story. It goes through an order of events from childhood through adolescence, and how she came to terms with her trauma through religion. I would have liked it if more focus was placed on Anna’s personal thoughts on the cult and the infamy that it had garnered, especially now that several decades have passed and the dust has settled.

I’m also glad that I decided to listen to this book on audio, which is narrated by Anna LeBaron herself. Hearing Anna speak directly made her narration more engaging than if I had read the book normally. The LeBaron cult was truly terrifying and a fascinating part of American history. Memory history is so invaluable when putting together a complete picture of a series of events, and Anna’s story filled in some of the missing pieces of what we know about the cult.

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