In this debut memoir, the author steps away from her religion, leading to both severe social consequences and personal fulfillment.Curtis grew up in Portland in a family of strict Jehovah's Witnesses. She was as faithful as could be, incessantly attending meetings and preaching to others, all while successfully pursuing a career at an American bank. She and her equally dedicated husband, Ross, lived happy, faithful lives together until a moment that changed everything. While proselyting, Curtis knocked on the door of a co-worker, and suddenly her message about the impending destruction of nonbelievers just didn't ring true anymore. The author's doubts festered and eventually led her to divorce both her husband and her faith. According to Jehovah's Witnesses, only death or sexual relations with another person can officially end a marriage. Curtis had sex after her divorce, but she kept this to herself. After moving to Chicago, climbing the corporate career even further, and finding fulfillment in other belief systems, she took the final step of confessing her sexual encounters and apostasy to her family and church leaders. The official shunning commenced and has continued to this day, only temporarily suspended for funerals. Curtis has organized her thoughts well and expresses them clearly and entertainingly. No detail of her spiritual, social, and professional journey, however, is too small to share, which stalls momentum. Still, the author's radical transformation--from dogmatism to relativism and from timidity to self-assurance--unfolds gradually and genuinely. Beyond providing an eye-opening look at her former religious community, this memoir subtly encourages readers to challenge childhood views in search of chosen beliefs.A profound, at times fascinating, personal transformation told with meticulous (if not excessive) detail.
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April 23, 2018
In this emotional memoir, Curtis writes of being raised by a devout Jehovah’s Witness mother, marrying within the faith, and eventually deciding to leave. From a young age, Curtis would crisscross her neighborhood on a weekly basis to proselytize and convert. Her mother was a devoted believer in “the Truth” (a term Curtis references often, to claustrophobic effect) and raised her three children within the faith, but Curtis’s father was not a Jehovah’s Witness—an incongruity that caused confusion throughout her life. Her inner conflict came to a head one Sunday when Curtis knocked on the door of an executive at the bank where she worked (a man she deeply respected for taking time off from work to be with his dying father) and suddenly realized how partisan and divisive her sermon sounded in the face of his grief. Curtis uses that encounter to trace back through her life, turning over moments from her past where she questioned her upbringing and relating stories of disconnect when she felt the fear of being “disfellowshipped” by her congregation if she didn’t fall in line. In the end, Curtis questions her marriage, her commitment to the Truth, and her entire way of living. This is a moving portrait of one woman’s life as a Jehovah’s Witness and her painful but liberating realization that she must give up her faith.