The May 2008 Book of the Month
Escape
By Carolyn Jessop
The May book of the month was recommended by Veronica. The other books it beat out were Belong To Me by Marisa de los Santos and The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards. We met at Ram to discuss the book over a tall glass of Merrill "Buttface" Jessop beer and a plate of shrimp.
Escape is the "dramatic first-person account of life inside an ultra-fundamentalist American religious sect, and one woman's courageous flight to freedom with her eight children." We were all appalled to read about the suffering and abuse women and children had to face within the FLDS cult. Even more outrageous is to think that this was happening recently and is still going on even today.
We didn't really have focused discussion questions but the discussion kind of just led itself. Here are some of the topics we discussed:
1. Which part of the story appalled and outraged us the most?
2. How were the men in the FLDS able to totally and completely control the women and children?
3. What do we learn from Carolyn's relationship with her children in regards to mothers?
We all agreed that Carolyn has an amazingly strong will and that she is definitely smart to have been able to carefully plan her escape so she would be successful. We also discussed our opinions of long underwear. To end the night, we all shared a mile high mudpie. Yum!
