When Men Become Gods: Mormon Polygamist Warren Jeffs, His Cult of Fear, and the Women Who Fought Back

Today's post is on When Men Become Gods: Mormon Polygamist Warren Jeffs, His Cult of Fear, and the Women Who Fought Back by Stephen Singular. It is 291 pages long and is published by St. Martin's Press. The cover has some woman dressed like pioneers on bottom and the beautiful mountains on the top. The intended reader is someone interested a more third party look at the Jeffs case. There is some language, talk of rape and child abuse, and violence in this book. The story is told in a third person way with information coming from all sides of this cult and crime. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the dust jacket- As the leader and self-proclaimed prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Later-Day Saints, a sect of Mormonism based on isolates southern Utah, Warren Jeffs held sway over thousands of followers for nearly a decade. His rule was utterly tyrannical. In addition to coercing young girls into polygamous marriages with older men, Jeffs reputedly took scores of wives, many of whom were his father's widows. Television, radio, and newspapers were shunned, creating a hidden community where polygamy was prized above all else.
But in 2007, after a two-year manhunt that landed him on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List, Jeffs's reign was forcefully ended. He was convicted of rape as an accomplice for his role in arranging a marriage between a fourteen-year-old girl and her nineteen-year-old first cousin.
In When Men Become Gods, Edgar Award nominee Stephen Singular traces Jeffs's rise to power and the concerted effort that led to his downfall. His arrest and trail were spurred on by law enforcement, private investigators, the Feds, and, perhaps most vocal of all, a group of former polygamist wives seeking to liberate young women from the arranged marriages they'd once endured. The book offers revelations into a nearly impenetrable enclave- a place of nineteenth-century attire, inbreeding, and eerie seclusion- providing readers with a rare glimpse into a bizarre tradition that's almost a century old, but that had only now been exposed.

Review- This is the third book I have read about Warren Jeffs and his insanity. In way it was very good because it gives the reader a very broad look at that world. We get insight from people who lived in that world, are still living in it, and the outsiders who interacted with them. On the other hand it was disappointing because it does not go into what got Jeffs convicted; which is an audio tape of him raping an eleven-year-old girl. Now Jeffs did not and does not see it as rape, because he was 'marrying' her but it was rape. Singular does not do more than touch the YFZ ranch where law enforcement found everything that was needed to destroy him. I do not know why that was not touched on. So I really enjoyed this book until the end when it really just stops. So if you are interested in learning about how things started then try this book. But if you want the ending then try something else.

I give this book a Three out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.