Jun 29 2008
“Escape” by Carolyn Jessop
Escape by Carolyn Jessop was a very difficult and depressing book for me. I picked it up because of course, polygamy has been all over the news lately - even Oprah did a show on polygamy where she invited polygamists to come onto her show and share their side of the story. There’s also been a plethora of polygamy books released - Shattered Dreams (which I already did a review of), His Favorite Wife, and a brand-new one called Stolen Innocence.
I’ve only read the two books, so I can only compare between them, but I have to say: Carolyn Jessop’s Escape had a very different take on polygamy than Shattered Dreams, although I supposed that’s to be expected. The author of Shattered Dreams (Irene Spencer) is quite a bit older than Carolyn and her story took place before Warren Jeffs came in and took over, so her version of the sect was much more tame and normal than what happened to Carolyn. And then of course you’ve also got two very different personalities. All polygamists don’t think the same, just like all Catholics don’t have the same temperaments. Some people may feel like if they’ve read one book on a subject, they’ve read them all, but in this case, that’s definitely not true.
I enjoyed reading Escape more - it starts out with a bang, on the night that Carolyn flees with her children and goes to Utah. It’s fast paced and your heart starts racing just from reading. Will she get out in time? Is she going to get caught? You can feel the tension rolling off Carolyn in waves. Unlike Shattered that suffered from a real lack of editorial insight, Escape has great pacing and a good timeline to it.
My only real qualm with Escape was along the same lines as the problem I had with Not Without My Daughter - Carolyn has a real bitterness to her attitude and writing. I didn’t expect her to be all smiles and sunshine about it, but even when something good or funny was happening, I still got this feeling that there is pure anger in her towards the polygamy cult and the experience itself. I walked away with the gut feeling that Carolyn is going to be healing from this experience for a very long time, as opposed to Irene who I felt healed and forgave faster and easier.
And perhaps I’m way off, who knows, but that was the vibe I got from the books.
Overall, it was a supremely depressing but needed look at the polygamist life. The Great Escape for Carolyn happened in 2003, so it isn’t as if this is an outdated book and things like this simply aren’t happening anymore. Instead, she gives a fairly current snapshop into the lives of polygamists - I don’t think I’ll ever see a news story on polygamy quite the same again.
I give it 4.25 out of 5 stars.
Hava
It seems that she wrote the book when her wounds were still fresh. Although I don’t know too much abou tthe sect, I would imagine that there would be a good deal of bitterness and anger. If it was a good experience, I imagine she would have stayed. I’m so curious, but at the same time I don’t think I can handle the read.