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Dietz and her siblings were raised in a traditional Mormon manner but in a dysfunctional household. The root of much of the family’s dysfunction could be traced to the parents’ interpretations of their roles in the home. The author, the oldest daughter, began acting against the tenets of the church in early adolescence and through her teen years. She brushed aside the shoplifting as it didn’t cause her guilt, but her desire to find a future husband would eventually lead to her losing the one thing she had been taught a woman should never lose: her sexual purity. Dealing with this caused Dietz tremendous remorse but didn’t stop her from continuing to be sexually active. As she grew older, she began to question her guilt and her faith. When her parents discovered that she was sexually active, her mother was upset, and her father wouldn’t look at her. The author left home that evening and was suddenly on her own. With the help of her previous boyfriend and her current one, she got a car and found a place to stay. She faced a difficult journey, but she was unwilling to go back to the church. As she got her feet under her, she began researching her faith and decided that the church had been lying to her and had helped cause the divisions in her family. Eventually, Dietz would make her own peace with her life and come to terms as best she could with her family.
There are many memoirs of people both losing their faith and gaining it. Many of the core themes in these books ring similar and true even when the authors come from vastly different religions. Some of the most popular with similar journeys include Leaving the Fold by Marlene Winell, Leaving the Saints by Martha Beck, and Unorthodox by Deborah Feldman. Like these other books, Dietz discusses how the split from the church also caused family discord. Stephen Dedalus states in Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, “I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church….” Through her memoir, Dietz comes to her own kind of realization about not serving that which she no longer believes, even at the cost of familial ties and church friends. It is a difficult conclusion and carries repercussions that will be present for the rest of the author’s life.
The writing in Dietz’s memoir displays the hand of a practiced professional. The text is clean, and the sentences and pace flow easily throughout the work. The early part of the book is slightly hampered by a forced emphasis on being literary, particularly with epiphanies, but by the middle of the book, this is forgotten, and the story takes the main stage. Dietz is also unafraid to be honest about her growth as a person, revealing in her narrative some of the typical adolescent attitudes she had that almost everyone exhibits. Most readers will have gone through some form of crisis of faith, and this work should resonate with them due to its honesty and universal experiences.