The true story of one girl's coming-of-age in a polygamist family. Ruth Wariner was the thirty-ninth of her father's forty-two children. Growing up on a farm in rural Mexico, where authorities turn a blind eye to the practices of her community, Ruth lives in a ramshackle house without indoor plumbing or electricity. At church, preachers teach that God will punish the wicked by destroying the world and that women can only ascend to Heaven by entering...

A woman forced into a plural marriage as a teenager with a man thirty-two years her senior describes growing up in a fundamentalist Mormon sect, the years of psychological abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband, and her decision to escape with her eight children.