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| DVD and Books for Sale | |
Below are fundraiser items we have for sale in our office and on our web site. | |
| Banking on Heaven | |
| Polygamy in the heartland of the American West | |
| Director: Dot Reidelbach Producer, Writer, Narrator: Laurie Allen Director of Photography: Thomas McArthur | |
| DVD Description | |
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BANKING ON HEAVEN is the inside story of the largest polygamous enclave in the United States, written, produced, and narrated by Laurie Allen, who escaped a similar polygamous sect at age sixteen.
While the media sensationalize this story, BANKING ON HEAVEN takes you INSIDE, takes you where no one has gone before, behind closed doors in Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah. Beautifully filmed and at times difficult to watch, BANKING ON HEAVEN exposes a primitive culture that mocks our Constitution, enslaves thousands of women and children, and uses mind-control and fear, clearly violating democratic and human rights. Ordering Information | |
| His Favorite Wife: Trapped in Polygamy | |
| A true story of violent fanaticism | |
| By Susan Ray Schmidt | |
| Book Description | |
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His Favorite Wife details the experiences of a young girl raised in a fundamentalist polygamist sect. At the age of 14, Susan becomes the sixth wife of Verlan LeBaron, one of the sect leaders. Woven with jealousies, and heartache, her story leads the reader through a murderous power struggle between the LeBaron brothers. Polygamist women are taught that obedience and unquestioning acceptance of polygamy will assure them a crown in heaven as a goddess. Few search out truth for themselves. Living a cloistered, sheltered life and giving birth to many children, traps them. Susan's book deals with these issues, as she too, was one of these women.
Cascading with well-developed characters, this true story will capture your soul and imagination as the author reveals how a group of kind-hearted, sincere people are led to embrace this controversial lifestyle in their pursuit of the highest degree of glory. Laced with surprising brush-strokes of humor, this heart-rending saga will take its readers on a journey that outsiders whisper of and shudder about. It answers the question that a polygamist's wife is asked countless times: How can you tolerate sharing your husband? Ordering Information | |
| Keep Sweet: Children of Polygamy | |
| By Debbie Palmer and David Perrin | Winner of the 2005 VanCity Prize for the best book published in British Columbia on women's issues. |
| Book Description | |
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Best Selling Author, Dr. David Perrin, co-authored Keep Sweet with Debbie Palmer so that readers could understand what it would be like to be a young girl growing up in the polygamous Mormon community of Bountiful. The foreword was written by Jon Krakuer, author of Into Thin Air, Into the Wild, and Under the Banner of Heaven.
Although the book is set in the early 50s and 60s, Debbie's experiences are representative of those that many children of polygamous groups are currently experiencing. Keep Sweet is non-fiction, but names have been changed to protect the safety and privacy of people mentioned. Based on Palmer's early memories, letters, and diaries, the memoir takes the reader inside the daily lives of children, sister-wives, husbands and leaders and provides an in-depth insight into the teachings of the fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Palmer's story begins when her father takes her to the polygamous community near Creston, BC in 1957. We follow Debbie from age two as she struggles to integrate into a strange society and culture. At age fifteen she becomes the sixth wife to the community's fifty-five year old leader. Keep Sweet follows Debbie's trials until the death of her husband in 1974. Palmer remained in the community until 1988 when, pregnant with her seventh child, she managed to escape. Ordering Information | |
| Child Brides | |
| By Carole A. Western | |
| Book Description | |
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CHILD BRIDES is an illuminating, intimate story of Julia Jefferson, who on her thirteenth birthday becomes a polygamous wife. In a religion where men have absolute control, Julia retaliates and saves her sanity by writing her memoirs. Through her journals, we experience the deprivation, jealousy, humiliation and abuse of being one of many women serving the sexual fantasies of one man. We learn how she and her daughters finally realize they are valuable human beings as they make their dangerous escape to the outside world and freedom.
Ordering Information | |
| Holy Murder: Polygamy's Blood | |
| By James R. Spencer | |
| Book Description | |
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HOLY MURDER is a look into the dark underground of polygamous Fundamentalism, practiced by more than 50,000 people in the West. Here sex and blood mix in religious excess. Men driven to obey God's devotion to "The Principle" live and die for their beliefs. Sometimes the violence spills over and touches people outside the system.
HOLY MURDER is set in the Wyoming of the Author's youth and describes the saga of Jan Kucera, a retired AP Bureau Chief who retires to the old homestead along the Bighorn River in Wyoming. Now freelancing, he writes a story for the New York Times about a polygamous sect located on a compound near the mouth of Shell Canyon at the foot of the Bighorns. Shortly after that account is published, a car bomb meant for him kills his wife. Now Jan has to face down his fears and the head of the cult, Prophet Hansen. Hansen is wealthy, politically savvy, and stealthy. State authorities are unable to connect the prophet, convincingly, to the crime. Ordering Information | |
| MURDER OF A PROPHET - The Dark Side of Utah Polygamy | |
| By John R. Llewellyn | |
| Book Description | |
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A riveting story of intrigue, murder, and sex. Lusting for worldwide power and recognition, the fanatical leader of a Utah polygamist cult launches a plan to become "the prophet" of all the polygamist cults—and then to take over the entire Mormon Church. Detectives fear a doomsday Waco-type standoff with women and children. Investigator John Llewellyn, polygamy expert, creates a fascinating tale of fiction based on real-life events.
As the drama unfolds, the personal background stories of individuals portray a realistic portrait of —
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| Click here for our suggested reading on polygamy and the FLDS | |
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