Book Review: Lost Boy by Brent W. Jeffs

2009 at 10am     Posted by Rebecca Schinsky

I received this book from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.

Recently published May 19, 2009 by Broadway Books (a division of Random House)

Brent W. Jeffs grew up with several mothers, dozens of siblings, and hundreds of cousins. He lived in a compound, followed strict rules about clothing, behavior, and religious practice that most of us would find very strange, and he lived in fear of upsetting his father, who suffered from PTSD, and of making a mistake that would cost him his salvation. Jeffs was raised in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), a polygamous Mormon sect, and Lost Boy is his memoir of growing up, getting out, and seeking justice for the abuses he suffered at the hands of the FLDS and its corrupt leaders.

One in a rash of FLDS-related memoirs to come out in the last few years, Lost Boy is the first I know of that presents a man’s perspective and experience. Jeffs is quick to note that while many outsiders may think men love the idea of having multiple wives and the implied sexual variety polygamy would provide, the reality of day-to-day life in a polygamous family is anything but dreamy.

Polygamy and its power structure continuously produce a constat, exhausting struggle for attention and resources.

Wives and children compete against each other for their husband and father’s love and attention, and husbands and fathers feel torn and overwhelmed by the lives that depend on them and all the needs they are required to meet. The FLDS purports to value and protect young girls and uses the prospect of adding a beautiful young woman to one’s family to motivate and manipulate men to do as they are told. But women are valued only for their ability to give birth and raise children, a problem Jeffs sees as equating women with animals to be “used up” and “worn out,” then put out to pasture and replaced by younger, fresher women as they age. In the FLDS, women are commodities to be traded, and the boys and men who get in the way or who create too much competition for wives are pushed out and become “lost boys.”

Lost boys, who, like the rest of the FLDS community, have been kept ignorant of the way the world works, stumble out from the protection of their compound into a society they have been taught to fear and which they do not understand. A shocking percentage of them turn to drugs and alcohol as a way to fit in and to numb the pain of being cut off from their families, and Jeffs’s experience is no exception. In Lost Boy, Jeffs reveals that he believes the environment of need, desperation, and depression created by the FLDS’s practice of polygamy has led to rampant child abuse and that the ambitious and corrupt leaders, chief among them Brent’s uncle Warren Jeffs, isolate and manipulate members of the community to satisfy and justify their own perverse desires.

Jeffs should know. He and several other young boys (including at least one of his brothers) were raped repeatedly by Warren Jeffs when they were just five and six years old. Jeffs does not remember this abuse clearly until his mid-twenties, but he recalls consistently feeling emotionally distanced and dissociated from his life, particularly when Warren was around, and he blames Warren Jeffs and the FLDS for the suicides of two of his older brothers.

If you’ve done any other reading about the FLDS, little of the information in Lost Boy will be new to you, but I think you’ll find it very interesting to hear about FLDS life from a male perspective. Jeffs also turns a critical eye to the structure of the church and exactly how it has succeeded in controlling its members lives and keeping them invested in their beliefs despite the hardships they experience on a daily basis, and I found those sections rather insightful.

By isolating their members from the rest of the world, making them feel special and elite for being among the few who have found the one true religion, and keeping them in constant fear of losing their salvation, FLDS leaders managed, for quite a while, to control people and have them think it was all for their own good. Obedience and conformity were rewarded, and families were encouraged to kick out and disown those who did not comply.

Our religion was completely based on faith in authority. Asking for reasons was disobedient and ungodly and questioning was simply not accepted.

The writing in Lost Boy is nothing special. Jeffs is very conversational, occasionally too much so, but this isn’t a book you read for the quality of the writing. Lost Boy gives us a look into this fascinating and disturbing religious community from a man’s perspective, and it highlights the memories and events that led to Warren Jeff’s rise to power, increasingly restrictive rules, and eventual arrest and prosecution. It is a quick and interesting read that I would recommend to anyone with an interest in comparative religion, religious sects, and polygamous communities, or who wants to learn more about the events that took place at the Texas Yearning for Zion Ranch last year and were featured prominently in the news. 3.75 out of 5.

Brent W. Jeffs attributes his recovery from his FLDS experiences and his success in seeking justice against Warren Jeffs to help and support he received from The Diversity Foundation. This group works with lost boys of the FLDS to help them adapt healthily into mainstream society and to recover from drug and alcohol addictions they’ve acquired along the way.

If you’ve read and enjoyed Lost Boy or other books about the FLDS, you don’t want to miss Jon Krakuer’s Under the Banner of Heaven.