This Dark World

A riveting memoir of one woman's immersion into Fundamentalist faith, and her decision, twenty years later, to leave it all behind.

Carolyn Briggs grew up with modest means in the Iowa Heartland. Pregnant at seventeen, married to her musician boyfriend a few months later, by the age of eighteen she found herself living in a trailer with no plans beyond having more babies. Then a friend from high school called to announce that she had asked Jesus into her heart.

That phone call altered the rest of Carolyn Briggs' life. It began innocently enough-a few minutes lingering on the televangalist stations, a cursory look at the Bible-and soon she had wholly given herself over to a radical, apocalyptic New Testament church. She wore modest clothing and kept her head covered, she spent hours in prayer and Bible study, eschewing drinking, meat, and even dancing. Her daily life was permeated with an overwhelming sense of the divine-she braced herself for the Rapture each time she heard trumpet music over the supermarket loudspeaker. After a traumatic second pregnancy, her marriage began to unravel, and it was only then that she dared to question the religious dogma she had embraced for all of her adult life to date.

Beautifully written and powerfully told, this memoir is a fascinating look at the nature of faith, and the inspiring story of one woman's struggle to find her place in the world.