The Worst Book World? Been There. Have the scars to prove it.

Which book’s world would be the absolute worst to live in?

Everybody loves this question. People get to sound dark and literary. Oh, Gilead would be awful. Oh, I’d never survive the Hunger Games. Oh, I’d not want to be in 1984.

Sure, babe. Me neither.

But my answer isn’t on the fantasy shelf. It’s over in memoir, quietly minding its business.

Cult Child

I wrote that book. Before I wrote it, I lived it. I was three when I was taken into The Move. Three. I didn’t sign up. I didn’t drink any Kool-Aid. I was still working on tying my shoes.

Here’s what dystopian novels get wrong. They come with a narrator who knows something is off. There’s always a heroine side-eyeing the system by chapter two.

Real life doesn’t hand you that.

When you’re a kid inside a cult, there’s no chapter two. There’s no escaping. There’s just the day in, day out misery. The rules are the rules. The fear is the weather forecast. You can’t question the walls openly, because there’s punishment attached to that.

You suffer sleeplessness. You wake up each day to work grueling hours in fields and kitchens, hauling water in buckets, for me, no electricity, limited education, censored literature, pedophiles lurking at every corner, and constant eyes watching your every move with rifles slung over their backs.

That’s what makes it the worst world. The cruelty dressed up as God’s love. Panem at least had the decency to look evil.

Fictional worlds end when you close the book. Mine didn’t. I carried it out into post-cult life with me. Into adulthood, into relationships, and into the way I still flinch at certain tones of voice and phrases. You don’t just leave a world like that. You spend years walking it back out of your body.

So I did the only thing that made sense. I wrote it down.

That’s what “I write to live” means. It’s not only an inspirational tagline for a t-shirt. It’s literal. Writing was how I finally got to stand outside that world, look at it in the face, and say, “Oh. That was a prison where I was trafficked as a child.”

So which book world would be the absolute worst to live in?

Mine. And I’m the only author I know who tells you this true story from the perspective of the child.

Lucky you, too. You only have to read it. And when you do, please remember, this censored life still exists in Delta Junction, Alaska, where members are held in religious slavery, unable to see their way out.

Alongside my memoir, Cult Child, is a free book club companion to guide your group with questions as you read. Get it here.

Welcome to my world.

Check out these Cult Child companion books.