Member of the Family: My life with Charles Manson, Life Inside His Cult, and the Darkness That Ended the Sixties

Today’s Nonfiction post is on Member of the Family: My life with Charles Manson, Life Inside His Cult, and the Darkness That Ended the Sixties by Dianne Lake and Deborah Herman. It is 384 pages long and is published by William Morrow. The cover has a split picture of Lake and Manson. The intended reader is someone who is interested in Charles Manson, his Family, and an insiders’ view of the whole affair. There is foul language, abuse, sex, rape, and violence in this book; reader discretion is advised. The whole story is told from first person close of Lake from her childhood all the way through the trail and some into her adult life. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the dust jacket- In this poignant and disturbing memoir of lost innocence, coercion, survival, and healing, Dianne Lake chronicles her years with Charles Manson, revealing for the first time how she became the youngest member of his Family and offering new insights into one of the twentieth century’s most notorious criminals and life as one of his “girls”
At age fourteen Dianne Lake—with little more than a note in her pocket from her hippie parents granting her permission to leave them—became one of “Charlie’s girls,” a devoted acolyte of cult leader Charles Manson. Over the course of two years, the impressionable teenager endured manipulation, psychological control, and physical abuse as the harsh realities and looming darkness of Charles Manson’s true nature revealed itself. From Spahn ranch and the group acid trips, to the Beatles’ White Album and Manson’s dangerous messiah-complex, Dianne tells the riveting story of the group’s descent into madness as she lived it.
Though she never participated in any of the group’s gruesome crimes and was purposely insulated from them, Dianne was arrested with the rest of the Manson Family, and eventually learned enough to join the prosecution’s case against them. With the help of good Samaritans, including the cop who first arrested her and later adopted her, the courageous young woman eventually found redemption and grew up to lead an ordinary life.
While much has been written about Charles Manson, this riveting account from an actual Family member is a chilling portrait that recreates in vivid detail one of the most horrifying and fascinating chapters in modern American history.
Member of the Family includes 16 pages of photographs.

Review- This is a riveting but tough to read story. Lake takes the reader from her childhood with an unstable father and mother who worships him to how she fell in with Manson and his Family. It was interesting, stomach-turningly horrifying, but in the end is up-lifting to see Lake overcome everything and become a good person. Lake does not pull any punches about what happened to her from being molested by her grandfather to her rape at the Manson’s hands. Lake does not want to underplay her experiences or make herself into a victim. Looking at the child and teenager, I saw a victim but looking at the adult I see a survivor who became someone great. Lake did not let what happened to her stop her from living a fulfilled life by becoming a special education teacher, getting married, and having three children of her own. Lake is an inspiring survivor and at the end of this book I was not depressed by what she had experienced but was up lifted by the way she lived her life in spite of Manson and his ‘Family’.

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