GIRL AT THE END OF THE WORLD : My Escape from Fundamentalism in Search of Faith with a Future

For Readers of Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven, a dazzling memoir of a girl growing up in a Christian fundamentalist sect, what it cost her to escape, and why Evangelical megachurches feel to her so disconcertingly familiar.

Elizabeth Esther grew up as the eldest and clearly favored granddaughter of the founder of a wacky, family-run sect of Jesus People. Enfolded in its xenophobic subculture, constantly prepped for the apocalypse, she was cut off from most contact with the larger world. At the hands of the faithful, she suffered physical abuse and nearly the loss of her faith. But perhaps the greatest loss was of her own sense of self: she was trained as a toddler to 'disappear' for hours; as a teen, to confess sins real and imagined to her prying, autocratic grandmother; as a teen wife, to serve and blindly obey her husband. She arrived in adutlhood convinced that no one—God included--could know or love a woman who "wasn't even there." Realizing she had nothing to lose, Elizabeth did the unthinkable: she left church...and began the arduous journey toward authentic faith. Her story is by turns frightening, hilarious, heart-breaking, and inspiring. Ultimately, her message will be received as a cautionary tale for believers in Evangelical churches--especially ones that depend on a cult of personality to pull in throngs and dollars. The author's voice on the page is likable, provocative and surprising. She has a strong online presence and her blog receives 80,000 pages views a month ( www.ElizabethEsther.com). She and her husband live with their five children in California.