Book Review - Stolen Innocence

Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs by Elissa Wall


My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Ever since I was sucked in by the series "Big Love", I've been hopelessly curious about all things Mormon-polygamous-sect related. This book was on my list at the library for a while, and I finally grabbed it recently with high hopes for drama and scandal.

It doesn't disappoint. In places, the book is slightly self-serving, but that's something I think you run into with just about any memoir that you read. People like to paint themselves in the light they want you to see them in. At times it is brutally honest, but at other times it seems to fudge a little. That's okay. It's still an interesting look inside of the Warren Jeffs rape case from the perspective of a victim.

It also startled me how much the story of Elissa Wall lined up with some of the storylines in Big Love. Clearly the reality of Elissa's life was an inspiration for some of the storylines in the series, which made it even more interesting to me.

There seems to be a lot of controversey on the net and among the FLDS community about her story, and whether or not the smiles in her pictures meant she was happy or miserable when she was put into an arranged marriage at fourteen. To me, the smiles are beside the point. Even if she thought she was happy at the time, it's beside the point. She was a child in an arranged marriage, and her story is horriby sad, as would be the case for any fourteen year old in that situation, whether they wanted it at the time or not.





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