Tag Archives: book review

book reviews, family, psychology, religion

A review of Women We Buried, Women We Burned, by Rachel Louise Snyder…

Greetings from Brno, in the Czech Republic. We had quite a drive from quaint Cesky Krumlov to this eastern city about which I’ve been curious for some time. Our hotel, which is very highly rated in reviews, is located outside of the city center. It’s quite modern and comfortable, but surrounded by many apartment buildings. The hotel itself shares space with a gym/spa and an ophthalmologist’s office, but there is a Vinotek nearby. I look forward to seeing the city and doing some exploring over the next few days. We’ll be here until Sunday.

I just finished reading Rachel Louise Snyder’s book, Women We Buried, Women We Burned: A Memoir, which was published on May 23 of this year. I had not heard of Snyder before I downloaded her book. It was a suggested sell by Amazon, when I bought another book in August. I thought it looked like an interesting read, so I bought it without knowing much about it. And now that I’ve read it, I have to join in the chorus of overwhelmingly positive reviews Snyder has received for her incredible life story. I related to it on so many levels, and yet a lot of other details of her story left me completely shocked and amazed. More than once, I said “Wow” out loud. I am glad to be finished reading it, because I’ve been dying to write a review.

On to my thoughts…

Rachel Louise Snyder, the author of Women We Buried, Women We Burned, lost her mother to breast cancer when she was just eight years old. Her mother was just 30 years old when she was diagnosed with her illness, and she was dead just a few years later. Rachel and her brother, David, came home from school one day to find an ambulance parked at her house in Pittsburgh. It wasn’t unusual for Rachel to see an ambulance at the house, given how sick her mother had been for most of her young life. But usually, the ambulances had the lights going as they picked up her mom to take her to the hospital. This time, the lights weren’t on, and there was no sense of urgency. Rachel’s mother, Gail, had died.

Rachel’s dad, who was raised Christian, but had converted to Judaism to marry Gail, soon started dating again. Rachel and David also had some babysitters who took care of them when their father was working. Their father’s first girlfriends were pretty normal people who introduced Rachel to rock music and makeup. Unfortunately, no one came along early enough to help Rachel when it was time for her first training bra; that was left up to a hapless clerk at Kmart (dear God!).

After some time passed, Rachel’s dad met and married a fundamentalist Christian woman named Barb who lived in Illinois. The house in Pittsburgh was sold, and Gail’s furniture was brought to Illinois, where Barb arranged it in a rental house. Rachel was told that she must call Barb “Mom” and think of Barb’s son and daughter as her siblings. She was told she was now a Christian, and she and David were sent to Faith Center Christian Academy, a school run by their Aunt Janet and Uncle Jim. Kids in that school wore uniforms and learned silently, using Personal Accelerated Christian Education (PACE) booklets. Rachel struggled to learn this way, especially when it came to math and science.

When the Christian school closed after her eighth grade year, Rachel and David went to the local high school, where Rachel continued to struggle to succeed. Rachel’s dad became extremely rules focused, and he employed corporal punishment to get compliance from his children. He even used Rachel’s mother’s sorority paddle from college to deliver the punishments until one day, the paddle broke. Rachel became rebellious and apathetic about school. She used drugs and ran around with guys. One day, her father presented her and David, as well as Barb’s children, with suitcases. He told them to pack up and leave, even though Rachel and David were still minors.

Pretty soon, Rachel was trying to survive on minimum wage jobs. That was one thing Rachel had going for her… a very strong work ethic and the ability to learn quickly. She soon found herself in the company of a kind young man who told her she needed to go to college. That was when Rachel’s life began to turn around, and she went on an incredible journey that took her all the way around the world and to a professorship at American University (my husband’s, and my sister’s, alma mater… 😉 ). She teaches journalism and creative writing there.

Rachel’s story is long and a bit convoluted, but incredible…

There were so many times when I was reading this book that I was left shocked and amazed. I could relate to it on many levels. I didn’t have an upbringing as difficult as Rachel’s was. My mom is still alive, and neither of my parents were fundies. I was never kicked out of their house. I did okay in school, too. But we definitely had our problems. My issues were more with my dad than my mom. He always seemed to be ashamed of me, and he was a big fan of corporal punishment. Dad was also an alcoholic, and he took out a lot of his frustrations and problems on me. So, when Rachel wrote about how her dad treated her, I related.

I also related when Rachel found her way into the expat lifestyle. She found her way by starting with the Semester at Sea program through her college. It sparked a hunger to see and experience the world, which she did. She became a citizen of the world, even choosing to have her daughter in Thailand instead of the United States, the only country where her international health insurance policy would not work due to the high costs of medical care there!

But I think what was really profound for me was when it dawned on Rachel that she wasn’t responsible for the bad decisions her father and stepmother made when she was still a child! When Rachel became a mother, she realized that she didn’t want her daughter to be burdened by guilt the way she had been, asked to forget about her mother, adapt to a new religion in a new state, and finally, when she couldn’t conform, kicked out of the family home and mostly forced to fend for herself. To her credit, Rachel did maintain a distant relationship with her family. Barb’s older children and Rachel’s brother didn’t. There were two more sons with Barb and Rachel’s dad, and they also maintained relations, even though they all struggled through the legalistic approach their father took toward parenting.

Rachel’s father was also one to believe in right wing conspiracy theories, which made things much worse. Toward the end of Barb’s life, Rachel’s dad had lost a lot of money in get rich quick schemes, and his house went into foreclosure. When Barb got sick with cancer, he consulted quacks to help her. It’s a testament to Rachel’s decent– Christlike– demeanor that she found it in her heart to help them, in spite of everything.

I guess if I have to offer a criticism of this book, it’s that it’s pretty long, and Rachel’s story is incredible on many levels. I almost felt like it could have been two books. She went through several phases in her life that she explains in detail, and they take time, energy, and fortitude to read. I almost feel like some of it could have been edited out or slimmed down a bit. And yet, when I look at Rachel’s life as a whole, I’m amazed by it. I am similarly amazed by my own life, and how it’s turned out. In some ways, I feel a kindred spirit with Rachel, although she’s done better as a writer than I have. 😉

Anyway, if you have the inclination and the time to read Rachel Louise Snyder’s book, Women We Buried, Women We Burned, I would highly recommend it. It surprised me, in a good way, on so many levels. I’m impressed by her grit and gumption. She clawed her way into what could have been a very mediocre and troubled lifestyle. I applaud her for managing that, and for writing this book.

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book reviews, healthcare

A review of Salt in My Soul: An Unfinished Life, by Mallory Smith…

I remember when I first read about the genetic disease, cystic fibrosis (CF). It was December 1985, and my parents had a subscription to Reader’s Digest. That month, the condensed book excerpt was Frank Deford’s heartbreaking memoir, Alex: The Life of a Child. Deford had written this achingly beautiful account of his daughter, Alexandra, who died from CF when she was just eight years old. Alex was almost a year older than me, so her story was particularly poignant as I read about her as a 13 year old. Later, I bought Deford’s book and read it more than once.

Ever since I first learned about CF through Alex’s story, I’ve been interested in reading more about people who have lived with and died from it. Cystic fibrosis is a disease that affects everything about living. Though there have been some significant medical science breakthroughs that have made it possible for many CF patients to live much longer than Alex did, the sad truth is, it’s a disease that still claims so many young, promising, amazing people long before they should die.

Mallory Smith was, like so many CF patients seem to be, an extraordinary young woman. She died on November 15, 2017 at age 25, having accomplished incredible things during her short life. Her passing came about two months after she received a double lung transplant at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). When she was still living, Mallory was a prolific writer. She kept a diary while she was struggling with cystic fibrosis.

After her death, Mallory’s mother, Diane Shader Smith, edited and published her diary, which she started when she was 15 years old and continued until her death at age 25. The book is called Salt in My Soul: An Unfinished Life. The title refers to a universal condition of babies born with CF, salty skin. It’s such a well known phenomenon, there’s even folklore about it:

“Woe to the child who tastes salty from a kiss on the brow, for he is cursed and soon will die.”

Salty skin is a hallmark of babies born with cystic fibrosis, a disease primarily of the lungs that is passed down via genes from both parents. Mallory was also a native of California and grew up near the Pacific Ocean. She was a swimmer, among so many other things. As I read about her medical travails, I couldn’t help but be amazed by all she managed to do with her life, in spite of her inevitably fatal illness. And, based on what I read in Salt in My Soul, she managed to do most of it with a positive, uplifting attitude, that won the respect of thousands of people who were lucky enough to know her personally.

Mallory was diagnosed with CF in 1995, at the age of three. She grew up having to endure frequent hospitalizations, taking endless medications (about 60 pills every day), having daily therapy sessions to loosen and expectorate the thick mucus caused by CF, and becoming all too familiar with hospitals in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Like most young people, Mallory had dreams of traveling the world and doing great things in her life. So, even though she was very sick at times, Mallory did all she could. She somehow managed to get excellent grades, participated and captained three sports teams, and got elected prom queen. She was clearly very likable and inspirational and based on her book, had so many friends and loved ones who adored her.

When she was choosing colleges, Mallory applied to Stanford University, not just because of its stellar academics and excellent reputation, but also because it had a hospital with CF experts on staff. Mallory’s college career was punctuated with hospital stays and doctor’s appointments, yet she was determined to live as normally as possible. She had roommates, and they became accustomed to everything she needed to accommodate her disease. Mallory eventually graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford with a 4.3 GPA and a major in human biology with a concentration in environmental anthropology. After graduation, she became a freelance writer and lived in Los Angeles for awhile, until her health required her to move back to San Francisco, to be closer to her Stanford doctors.

When Mallory was a teenager, her lungs became infected with bacteria, including a deadly form of  Burkholderia cepacia that became a superbug highly resistant to antibiotics. CF is bad enough when the bacteria involved are not superbugs; however, Burkholderia cepacia colonization made it much more difficult for Mallory to qualify for the double lung transplant she desperately needed to survive. Salt in My Soul covers the story of Mallory’s fight for a transplant, which doctors were reluctant to do. The superbug infection makes it much less likely that the transplant will be successful, as the bacteria can still colonize in the patient’s lungs and kill them quickly. Ultimately, that is what happened in Mallory’s case.

Even as she was dying, Mallory’s family and friends were trying to find a new treatment for her. Her parents reached out to an epidemiologist whose husband had “phages” treatment, a new and experimental protocol that has shown some promise in helping people vanquish superbug infections. They were just about to try it with Mallory when her health went past the point of no return.

The phages treatment was one that Mallory never had the chance to try, but she did help research at least one drug. Mallory was being treated with a medication called Ataluren, which had seemed to be helping her. However, she experienced multiple episodes of hemoptysis (coughing up blood), and was taken out of the study. The drug was later discontinued.

This book covers the incredibly challenging financial issues faced by families who battle CF. I got the sense that Mallory’s parents were fairly well off financially, and they did have insurance. However, like all insurance companies, Blue Cross didn’t want to pay for certain necessary services. When it came time for her transplant, it was offered at a hospital that was not in Blue Cross’s network, and officials there refused to approve her for coverage. It took a minor miracle to straighten out that mess, and I was left sitting there, shaking my head in amazement. If I hadn’t married Bill, I might have wound up working for a health insurance company, as one of my graduate degrees is in public health- health administration. Health insurance is kind of in my wheelhouse… but reading about the dirty dealings Mallory’s family had to endure with their health insurer made me glad that’s not my life’s work. Health insurance companies in the United States literally gamble with people’s lives.

Mallory’s story also includes insight as to what it was like for her to have a love life while suffering from CF. Mallory had a very devoted boyfriend named Jack who was always there for her, just as her parents were. Jack includes some entries in the book, writing about how he knew his love affair with Mallory would end in tragedy.

I just finished reading Salt in My Soul this morning. While I don’t think it affected me in quite the profound way Frank Deford’s book, Alex: The Life of a Child did, I did find Mallory Smith’s story very moving and, at times, infuriating. A few days ago, without naming the book, I wrote about how Mallory was mistaken for a coke fiend because of her illness. She almost got arrested, simply because a bathroom attendant thought she’d been doing lines of cocaine in a public restroom. No… she had been suffering from one of the many symptoms of her fatal disease. It was just one more indignity and inconvenience she had to endure, thanks to being born with a genetic anomaly.

In another passage, Mallory’s mother wrote about how, even though she had a handicapped placard on her car, a tow truck driver in Pittsburgh tried to extort $200 in cash from her. It took the kindness of strangers to prevent him from taking the car and potentially putting Mallory’s life at risk, due to the fact that her necessary medical equipment was in it.

I felt a little guilty about my own persistent bad attitude about life. All Mallory wanted to do was live her life and achieve her dreams. So many of us are born with healthy bodies, and yet we fail to live up to our own potential. And so often, when I read about someone with CF, I read about an extraordinary person who does all they can just to live. I can think of so many people with CF who have achieved the incredible, even though they suffer(ed) from such a devastating disease that robbed them of so much– independence, dignity, normalcy, even the most basic of freedoms. And at the end of her life, after Mallory had had several “dry runs”, waiting for new lungs, she suffered so much that she had brief wishes for death. I almost wonder if it would have been better, and she might have lived longer, if she hadn’t had the surgery. But I know from reading Salt in My Soul, Mallory desperately wanted to try everything.

I guess if I can take anything from reading this book, it’s that you really can do things that seem impossible, if you put your mind to it and set your heart on success. Good health is a priceless gift that more people should appreciate and embrace. So many extraordinary people would love to simply be healthy. For that lesson alone, I think more people should read Mallory’s story. I give it five stars out of five. There’s a link to the book on Amazon at the bottom of this page.

Salt in My Soul has also been made into a documentary, and it can be watched on many of the most popular streaming platforms, including Google Play, Vimeo, and Apple TV, as well as Comcast, Cox, and Spectrum on demand. Below is the trailer for the film.

The trailer for Salt in My Soul.

Edited to add, August 23, 2023: I watched the documentary yesterday. It was well worth viewing. Mallory was such a beautiful, remarkable soul. No wonder so many people adored her for her all too brief life. I highly recommend the documentary! I downloaded it from Apple Plus.

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book reviews, true crime

Repost: Review of I’m No Monster: The Horrifying True Story of Josef Fritzl

Here’s another reposted review about Josef Fritzl. It was written in September 2014 and appears as/is.

If you’ve been reading this blog recently, you know I’ve been reading about Austria’s infamous Josef Fritzl, a man who imprisoned and raped his daughter, Elisabeth, in an underground cellar for 24 years.  Fritzl had seven children with his wife, Rosemarie, and seven more with Elisabeth, not including one that was miscarried.  Six of Elisabeth’s children are still living.  One of the seven, a twin to her son, Alexander, died just a few days after he was born in the cellar.  Three of Elisabeth’s children were raised above ground, while the two eldest, Kerstin and Stephan, and the youngest, Felix, stayed underground with their mother.

The first book I read about this case was Secrets in the Cellar by John Glatt.  I followed up with I’m No Monster, written by Stefanie Marsh and Bojan Pancevski.  Overall, I think I’m No Monster is the better book, although I did notice there were some typos and errors in it.  For one thing, the authors repeatedly refer to St. Poelten as St. Pollen.  I almost wonder if the word was “spell checked” as they wrote it and they never noticed it.  For another thing, there are some awkward sentence structures in the book that could have used editing.  The writing is also frequently somewhat repetitive.

The information presented within the book, however, is very interesting.  The authors go into more detail about Fritzl’s upbringing that Glatt omitted.  For example, I didn’t know that Josef Fritzl’s mother had spent time in a concentration camp for not housing German officials.  She had been a very cold and abusive woman before she went away, but was much worse when she came back.  Fritzl was supposedly beaten bloody by his mother until he finally got big enough to fight back.  He was left with emotional scars that supposedly drove him to violate his daughter.  He has been quoted as saying he was “born to rape” and having Elisabeth gave him someone to victimize, as sick as it is.  I didn’t get as much of a sense that the authors of I’m No Monster were injecting their own opinions about the case as much as Glatt did, although obviously neither book paints Fritzl in a positive light.   

The authors of I’m No Monster also write about the community of Amstetten, where this crime took place.  It is apparently a very straight-laced kind of town at a perfection junction between Germany and Italy.  It even sounds like the kind of place I might want to visit sometime.

Now that I’ve read two books on Josef Fritzl, I think it may be time to move on to another topic.  I hate to say I enjoy reading about true crime, though I do find the people involved in these cases fascinating.  Josef Fritzl is a liar and a narcissist.  According to this book, he wanted to be studied by the top psychologists and psychiatrists and was even working on his own memoirs…  As if being infamous gives him the right to become a celebrity of sorts.  Maybe reading books about Josef Fritzl is counterproductive in that sense, since it gives criminals notoriety that they don’t deserve.  For me, personally, reading these books offers a glimpse into the mindset of criminals.

Anyway, I would recommend I’m No Monster, though I do think it could have been better written.

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book reviews, true crime

Repost: John Glatt’s Secrets in the Cellar– the horrible story of Josef Fritzl and his double life

Here’s a book review I wrote for my original blog in September 2014. It appears here as/is.

I remember being as shocked as everyone else was in April 2008, when the world became aware of 73 year old retired engineer, Josef Fritzl.  At the time, Bill and I were in the middle of our first time in Germany and I recognized St. Polten, the town where Fritzl was being jailed.  I visited the town by chance in August 1997, on my way home from my Peace Corps assignment in Armenia.  I remembered St. Polten as a charming place, not too far from Vienna.  Now it was in the news because of Josef Fritzl, rapist, kidnapper, and murderer. 

Josef Fritzl, an elderly man who had seemed so brilliant and respectable for most of his life, had just been outed as a monster who had held his daughter, Elisabeth, captive in an underground prison for twenty-four years.  Not only had Fritzl kidnapped his own daughter, he had also repeatedly raped and beaten her.  And he had also made eight children with her, one of whom was miscarried, one who died three days after birth, three who lived underground with Elisabeth, and the other three who were raised by him and his wife, Rosemarie.

Rosemarie, who had also borne seven children with Fritzl, was heartbroken on August 28, 1984, when her daughter Elisabeth went missing.  She was unaware that her husband had built an elaborate dungeon underground on their property in Amstetten, Austria, and that her daughter was underground being raped and tortured.  Fritzl forced Elisabeth to write a letter explaining that she had joined a religious cult and warning her parents not to try to find her.  And Rosemarie, who had always been a very passive soul that never questioned anyone, took Elisabeth at her word.  For some reason, it never occurred to her to question when three of Elisabeth’s seven babies were dropped at her doorstep with notes explaining that she couldn’t take care of them.

Though the Fritzl story is truly horrifying, I am a sucker for true crime.  I decided to read John Glatt’s 2010 book, Secrets in the Cellar, which is about the Fritzl case.  This book turned out to be a real page turner, not so much because of the way it was written, but because this crime is so extraordinary and horrible.  Austria had already been reeling from the story about Natascha Kampusch, a ten year old girl from Vienna who was abducted, beaten, and enslaved by a stranger who kept her in an underground pit for eight years.  As horrible as that story was, Fritzl’s story was far worse.  He was doing these horrible things to his own daughter and the children he forced her to have with him.

Glatt does a good job of explaining how Fritzl came to be the monster that he is.  Fritzl was born in 1935 and raised by an abusive mother who beat him savagely.  As a young boy, he had witnessed firsthand the horrors of Adolf Hitler, but Hitler was apparently less terrifying than his own mother.  Fritzl eventually came to adore and respect her as a “great woman”, even though she was very abusive and controlling.

Josef Fritzl was a handsome man who had a very strong libido.  He was attracted to “nice” girls and dated often, finally settling on Rosemarie, a woman who was very passive and meek.  By Glatt’s account, Fritzl was a very competent engineer who seemed very normal in most ways.  But he ruled his house with an iron fist and was very abusive and cruel to his wife and their children.  Fritzl was also a convicted rapist who frequently hired prostitutes, many of whom later told police about his sick fantasies.  Fritzl may have also been responsible for other unsolved rapes and murders of women.

Elisabeth was Fritzl’s fourth child, born in 1966, and she resembled Fritzl’s mother.  From her birth, Josef Fritzl became obsessed with her.  By the time she was eleven years old, he had started raping her.  Though he let her go to school and even become trained in the culinary arts, he did not want her to date boys.  In August 1984, she was 18 years old and on the brink of escaping him when he asked her to help him move a heavy steel door to his cellar.

As they were moving the door, Fritzl overpowered Elisabeth, covered her nose and mouth with ether, and handcuffed her.  He then moved her to the prison he had spent six years constructing.  She would stay there for 24 years.  Only when Elisabeth’s eldest daughter, Kerstin, became deathly ill did Fritzl finally let Elisabeth and sons Stefan and Felix leave the dungeon so that Kerstin could get medical care.  It was then that the whole shocking story unfolded.

A 60 Minutes Australia story about Josef Fritzl.

Imagine, for a minute, being kept in a dungeon underground for twenty-four years, not seeing the light of day or breathing fresh air.  Then imagine being born in that dungeon and never seeing the sun or the moon or rain.  That was the reality of what happened to Elisabeth Fritzl and the children who were kept in the dungeon with her.  The youngest child was five when they were finally let out and being outside was like being in outer space.  Elisabeth’s children had only seen the outside world on television.  Kerstin, the nineteen year old daughter whose illness prompted their release, was kept in a medically induced coma for weeks after they were let out of the cell.  She very nearly died never having known the pleasure of feeling sunlight on her face. 

Secrets in the Cellar is well-written and interesting, though I did notice a few passages that became a bit repetitive.  Also, I have a sneaking suspicion that Glatt didn’t actually interview many of the people involved in this case.  That’s not entirely his fault, since the Fritzl family was very heavily guarded and protected from journalists.  On the other hand, what he’s written here most people could probably find out by reading news articles about the Fritzl case.  The book just makes the story more conveniently packaged.  Nevertheless, I am not sorry I read Secrets in the Cellar and I would recommend it to those who want to read about the Fritzl case.  I’d probably give it three stars out of five.

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book reviews, LDS, true crime

Repost: my review of The Sins of Brother Curtis…

Here’s a repost of a book review I wrote of The Sins of Brother Curtis, the sordid story of a Mormon convert who molested a number of young boys.  It was not a comfortable read for me, but it was a well-written and fascinating book.  I gave it five stars. I originally wrote this piece for Epinions.com in 2011. I am reposting it as/is.

Because my husband is a former member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons), I have done a lot of reading about Mormonism.  I also have an interest in true crime.  Some weeks ago, someone on the Recovery from Mormonism Web site posted about a book called The Sins of Brother Curtis: A Story of Betrayal, Conviction, and the Mormon Church (2011).  The poster made the book sound compelling, so off I went to Amazon.com to download it for my Kindle.

The premise

Written by Lisa Davis, a veteran journalist who once wrote for Village Voice Media, The Sins of Brother Curtis is about a man named Franklyn Curtis and the many young boys he molested while a member of the LDS church.  In 1991, Curtis molested a 12 year old boy named Jeremiah Scott.  In 1997, Scott sued the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, alleging that the church knew of Curtis’s penchant for child molestation and did nothing to protect him or other boys in the church from Curtis.  Moreover, Curtis had a long rap sheet acquired before he had become a Mormon and got involved with various church callings that allowed him to charm families and ingratiate his way into sexual relationships with boys. 

Scott’s Seattle based lawyers, Tim Kosnoff and Joel Salmi, had a hell of a job on their hands.  The church’s lawyers fought back vehemently against the allegations against the LDS church’s involvement in Curtis’s crimes.  Scott’s lawyers tracked down over twenty different men who, as children, were victimized by Frank Curtis, who held church callings that put him into contact with boys, even though he had been excommunicated three times, twice for infractions that were related to his penchant for molesting children.  Curtis’s crimes against children stretched back decades and across several state lines. 

In her well-written expose, Davis unravels the complex story of a man whose perversions ruined lives and the church that apparently covered it up.  She also explains in detail the convoluted and challenging process Scott’s lawyers navigated to try to get justice for their client.  Franklyn Curtis was not involved in the civil suit or prosecuted for his crimes because he died in 1995 at the age of 92.

My thoughts

It took awhile to get through this book.  That’s not because it wasn’t interesting; it’s more because the subject matter is very disturbing.  Davis writes in an engaging style that is easy to read and follow, but she includes information that is frankly pretty nauseating.  I don’t fault her for including the information, but will warn to squeamish types that the sins of Brother Curtis may make their skin crawl.

Davis includes photos, pictures of legal documents, and even a picture of a blank disciplinary form used to document church members’ infractions of church rules and disciplinary actions taken.  The LDS church was forced to reveal its records of disciplinary actions taken against Frank Curtis, though it fought hard to keep those records confidential.

Davis reveals that the lawyers involved in this landmark case were somewhat disappointed in the outcome, even though it led to a sizeable financial settlement for their client, Jeremiah Scott.  The lawyers were eventually approached by other victims who had suffered in silence and they have gone on to bring suits against the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Catholic church, Boy Scouts of America, and the Salvation Army.  There have also been other attempts to sue the LDS church for covering up sexual abuse toward minors.  I couldn’t help but feel a bit unnerved and skeeved out reading about how so many young people are abused by adults involved in religious organizations.  The young people no doubt trusted these people because they were members of their church.

I suspect that this book will be very uncomfortable reading for devout members of the LDS church.  Some might feel defensive as they read about this case.  Indeed, Lisa Davis once worked with the late Deborah Laake, a former member of the LDS church and a vocal opponent of it.  Laake wrote a book called SecretCeremonies, which was published in the 1990s.  It was a scathing account of her time in the church and was widely criticized by outraged Mormons.  However, I have read that book with my husband and he has verified that it’s not full of lies.  In her acknowlegements in The Sins of Brother Curtis, Davis thanks Deborah Laake for her bravery and for leading her to write her own book.  Lisa Davis is not now and has never been Mormon, so I imagine some readers will claim that her viewpoint is skewed.  I found her reporting fair and thorough, though it definitely does not cast the church in a flattering light.

Overall   

While The Sins of Brother Curtis is ultimately a book about unspeakable crimes commited by an elderly pervert that will be unpleasant reading for many people, I think it’s an important book.  I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in reading about true crime, especially those involving religious organizations.  I would also recommend it to anyone researching legal cases involving religious organizations and sexual abuse.

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