Read this book if you have read "Stolen Innocence"

books:


	• When Men Become Gods: Mormon Polygamist Warren Jeffs, His Cult of Fear, and the Women Who Fought Back Stephen Singular St. Martin's Press, 2008 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 15 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Good history of FLDS and the Jeffs prosecution...

This book was done before the April, 2008 raid on the FLDS property near San Angelo, Texas, which put the cult back in the news again following the events depicted here. It is essential background in understanding how the Texas stronghold of this religious sect might play out. Why this group appeals to women at all is a mystery to me, but it seems like a good deal for a man, as long as he does NOT cross the self-annointed prophet, who functions as God on earth to the thousands of members. The man can have many women, including teens. The women, or "wives" in a non-legal, spiritual sense, can't contradict or refuse to service their husbands or especially decline to let the husband accept another "wife" into the family. You've heard the name Warren Jeffs, the now disgraced prophet, but this book tells you about his damaged personality, his crimes against his followers, and his short time as the supreme leader. One surprise is that many of the people still living in the twin cities of Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona, the original home of the FLDS, are no longer following the Jeffs' prophet-producing line, or taking underage girls to bed. That's good news. The bad news is that many living members apparently practiced pedophilia, incest, and (in effect) pimping their daughters to curry favor, while abandoning and rejecting their teen sons in order to make more girls available for older men. It is unlikely many of them will ever be prosecuted in this life. If you have even a casual interest in the doings of the FLDS cult, this book will be useful to you. We have not yet figured out why so many people are susceptible to the divine claims of the David Koresh/Jim Jones/Warren Jeffs brand of psychopathology, and this volume does not address that question except to note that if you are born into that belief system, and isolated enough so that contrary views are never presented to you, it is pretty damn hard to break out. The HBO series "Big Love", about a man with three families in an urban setting, is well-written and well-acted by beautiful men and women. Some of the secondary characters represent the darker side of fundamentalist LDS life. This book presents more about the less pleasant folks, and less prominent are the articulate, educated plural wives and hard-working husbands seen in the television show.

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Portrait of Oppression

"When Men Becomes Gods" is a portrait of oppression. Wrapped in religion, perhaps, but it's about controlling others. The book, thoughtfully researched and carefully laid out, is a chilling tale. How could so many look the other way? Why did it take so many hard-working private citizens to bring the evidence forward? It made me think: what other issues is government generally avoiding because it's just plain inconvenient? It's obvious courage was needed to break up this sect of the Mormon church, to protect young women, and it's obvious that courage came from individuals working independently--and relentlessly--to bring Warren Jeffs to justice. Sure, the formal wheels of justice finally move in but the key word is "finally." This is a book about heroism but it's played straight, built on solid reporting and research. Singular doesn't play for high drama or sensationalism. His steady reporter's eye writes the facts and facts are in abundance here. "When Men Are Gods" assembles a rich cast of real people on all sides of the equation and yet there is no problem keeping track of all the major and minor players. That's a real feat. He does it with colorful, highly detailed and colorful brush strokes that render the scene and characters in vivid relief. In the end, read "When Men Become Gods" and wonder about overly righteous men who cloak themselves with false power and exert control over the helpless. This is an intriguing, three-dimensional struggle about the power of the individual, the whims of government, and the false pretenses of gods on earth. The detail about the interior of the SUV Jeffs was riding in when he was captured? Well, that just about says it all.

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Meticulous research; not emotionally biased

I know, I know, I should wait until I finish reading this. But I am 2/3 of the way through this book, and it gets better every day. I can't wait another moment. I bought it because I worked with Mr. Singular in Denver 25 years ago. He was a great writer then, and he's better now.

This book goes way beyond everyone's repulsion at the sex-with-a-minor charges or the polygamist-cult aversions most of us have. It drills way down into the history of all of the players in this drama. A saga like this doesn't grow and build for as many years as this one has unless it's complex and has a huge cast of characters with a variety of needs/lusts.

It covers the willingness of the U.S. government to turn a blind eye for many decades (and still seems to be doing so, in many cases). It names names, and introduces us to the people who got passionately involved in exposing Jeffs and his cohorts for what they really stand for. And, perhaps best of all, Singular tells us the stories of the women who were (are) victimized by this man and his way of life. It shows us how they each came to the realization that the way of life they'd grown up with was wrong, and how they extricated themselves. It introduces us to others who have come in from the outside to protect them, and why.

This freak has affected so many people--Singular also goes into great detail about the society of "Lost Boys"--countless "useless" male teens (these communities have an excess of men, who are useless because they can't carry children) he threw out of their homes and cast into the streets with no education, no skills, and no normal socialization experience--and the efforts to save them. Efforts that seem to be working.

Others have written books on this subject, but I venture to say this is the best researched and most detailed. This book shows us how easily a religion becomes a cult. At the end of it all, which religion doesn't have a dark side?

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Read this book if you have read "Stolen Innocence"

First of all, I need to point out that indeed Warren Jeffs is not a "Mormon Polygamoust." He is a fundamentalist Mormon, which the author does enforce many times throughout the book. I wonder why this is part of the title...

Anyway, I found this book very objectively written, and very respectful of the FLDS members themselves, which I applaud fullheartedly, however, the book wasn't as interesting as I expected it to be. It was full of legal jargon and drawn out courtroom scenes.

This is certainly worth the read if you have read "Stolen Innocence" by Elissa Wall. It puts her story in a different light and very interesting to compare the two books.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

In When Men Become Gods, New York Times bestselling author Stephen Singular casts a light on a dark corner of religious extremism. He reveals a group of fundamentalists operating in the present-day United States, where teenage girls are kept in virtual bondage in the name of upholding the ?sacred principle? of polygamy.

As the leader and self-proclaimed prophet of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, a sect of Mormonism based in isolated 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. It was a movement championed by law enforcement, private investigators, the Feds, and perhaps most vocal of all, a group of former polygamous wives seeking to liberate young women from the arranged marriages they?d once endured. The book offers new revelations into a nearly impenetrable enclave---a place of nineteenth-century attire, inbreeding, and eerie seclusion---providing readers with a rare glimpse into a tradition that?s almost a century old, but that has only now been exposed.