Property: The True Story of a Polygamous Church Wife

Today's Nonfiction post is on Property: The True Story of a Polygamous Church Wife by Carol Christie and John Christie. It is 168 pages long and is published by Dundurn. The cover is brown with a keyhole under the title and a house in the distance. The intended reader is someone who is interested in cults, polygamy, and survivor stories. There is very mild foul language, talk of sex, and violence in this book. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the back of the book- The true story of a brave woman's nearly 40 years in a polygamous cult, her eventual escape, and her struggle to integrate into a world she barely knew. In the early 1970s, an innocent teenager who had led a sheltered life was forced to leave her family and enter into a polygamous, abusive, and deviant relationship with a man called the Prophet. In 2008, nearly 40 years later, she fled his religious sect. Property is not a misnomer. It accurately depicts how the women in the sect were treated. Carol Christie reveals the degradation, abuse, and brainwashing that the Church Wives endured. She exposes the physical abuse, the mental cruelty, the slave labour, and the sexual deviance that took place near Owen Sound, a small community just a few hours north of Toronto, as well as at other locations. She describes the many opportunities that officials had to investigate but walked away from, swayed by the charismatic Prophet. Carol is building a new life, one of freedom and options. With no money and no job, she started again and is now dedicated to helping others who have escaped while raising awareness about the dangers of the cult.

Review- This book sounds like it is promising to give the reader an inside, up close and personal view into the life of a polygamous woman. It gives some in bits and pieces but it gives any real details about her life, her marriage, or even her cult. Christie just does not want to give details about anything other than some of the abuse that she survived at the current leader's hands. That is it, she does not really talk about being a polygamous wife, she does not really talk about the inside of having other wives, their children, and all the problems that comes with that. I am not sure what she is trying to do with this book as she will not even name who the abusers are, so that outside people can know what is really going on. The writing is not terrible but there is just no substance to the story. I was disappointed, at times bored, and overall unimpressed with this survival narrative.

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