fter reading some of the advance reviews of Martha Beck’s latest book, Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith, one might expect a book filled with, as one review states, “the requisite cast of characters straight out of nineteenth century anti-Mormon exposés: secret rites, blood atonement, murderous Danites, and, of course, polygamy.” Having read and loved all three of Beck’s previous books as well as her monthly column in Oprah magazine I had consistently found Beck’s writing to be witty and entertaining, but more important, authentic, honest, and empowering. The reviews I read, including her family’s response to the book, were so negative that I wondered if I had been wrong in my impressions about Beck. Upon reading the book and carefully examining the reviews, however, I found that the reviewers have critically misrepresented the book’s story and message.

The reviews circulated in advance of the book’s publication are primarily assaults on Beck’s credibility, mixed with information from Leaving the Saints. For example, one reviewer questions not only Beck’s current book but also her first book, Expecting Adam, which the critic said she had loved when she had read it earlier. Several techniques are used to discredit Beck’s story. One method is to take quotes from different places in the book and put them together in an effort to show that Beck’s statements are not internally consistent. For example, Beck is quoted on page 6 of the book, “The only conviction I embrace absolutely is this: Whatever I believe, I may be wrong.” This is juxtaposed with a quote from page 21: “Of one thing I am absolutely certain: I haven’t invented a single thing.” Taking these statements out of context appears to show that Beck is contradicting herself; however, they make sense when read within the story as a whole.

Reviewers have also focused on a few peculiar incidents in the book that depict life in Provo, while ignoring the book’s central theme. For example, one reviewer recounts Beck’s assertion that men at BYU were required to wear socks because “ankle hair is an extension of pubic hair.” There is also a story of a bishop telling a woman she’s a second-class citizen and a hair stylist’s demand that Martha obtain permission from her husband before he’ll cut her hair short. These trivial incidents, which add color to the story, are all used to cast doubt on the larger assertions in Beck’s book. Although the events that are recounted are hard to believe, I have lived in Utah (and attended BYU) long enough to accept that they are entirely possible. Perhaps the critics have done neither.

Beck’s narrative style is also called into question by some reviewers who declare that she has not produced an “independently verifiable truth claim,” and she is criticized for not applying qualitative research methods or anthropological principles in her writing. Beck’s use of dialogue instead of third person reporting is also criticized. One reviewer declares, “Of course it makes the story eminently more interesting to read, but I found myself distracted by the knowledge that these detailed conversations…were being reconstructed from memory.” Beck is also faulted for not providing an “intelligent critique of the [LDS] Church.”

These reviewers seem to have misunderstood the purpose of Beck’s book: It is a personal memoir, not a sociology research project, nor a formal analysis of Mormon doctrine. Beck is not building a case to be presented in a court of law through “straight description and recorded evidence,” as it is suggested she should; she’s telling HER story.

Beck’s “witty, saucy, humorous” style is also condemned, even by the reviewer who had enjoyed this approach in previous books. Beck’s self-deprecating humor is a basic element of all of her writing, and is not unique to this story. Not only is her style entertaining and engaging, but in this book it offers an especially welcome relief from the grim reality of the abuse and the effect it had on Beck. This includes persistent anorexia and a desire to commit suicide that Beck says beset her from the age of six.

Critics miss one of the major points of the book when they assume that they must believe that either Beck is a “pathologically devoted liar” or that her father, Mormon apologist Hugh Nibley, was a “pathetic, deeply disturbed man living in his own private hell.” Hugh Nibley’s brilliance is undisputed, and his voluminous works stand on their own merits. He was deeply admired and respected for his scholarly and personal contributions to BYU and the Mormon church.

But a superior intellect does not automatically translate into effective social skills; in fact, at times, it mitigates against them. Nibley’s personal eccentricities were almost as legendary as his prodigious mental gifts. It comes as a surprise to no one who knew him or his family that his ability to relate to others did not match his intellectual capacity. This does NOT automatically mean that we should believe that he sexually abused his daughter. I am simply pointing out that neither proposition is mutually exclusive. It is entirely possible to respect Nibley’s scholarship and writings AND believe that Martha is telling the truth about her experiences. People who molest children are not evil monsters, as we might like to believe. They are complicated individuals who cope with internal and external pressures in ways that hurt others. This is one of the major points of Beck’s book, which many reviewers seem to have missed. Beck sensitively discusses her father’s vulnerability and the complex set of circumstances that she believes led to his transgressions against her.

It is not surprising that there has been a strong reaction to Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith by some members of the LDS church and by some of Beck’s family members. Some reviewers have not stopped at criticizing the book itself, but have called into question Beck’s sanity and character. As one critic wrote, “Was she a bright but deeply mentally disturbed woman with an obsessive need to be admired and a mercenary approach to book publishing? Or…[was] she simply trying to heal and help others break the stifling silence that often surrounds abuse?”

It is a common saying in Mormonism that “by your fruits ye shall know them.” What are Martha Beck’s “fruits?” She has built a flourishing career as a life coach [described on NPR as “the best-known life coach in America] and writer, including a monthly column in “Oprah Magazine. Is this the picture of a “deeply mentally disturbed woman”? What about the suggestion that she has “an obsessive need to be admired and a mercenary approach to book publishing?” Given her successful career, it seems highly unlikely that she would be writing such an intensely personal book because she needs the money. Moreover, Leaving the Saints is her fourth book, not her first; the other three were all bestsellers.

It should also be noted that Beck was not the first to publish assertions of her father’s sexual abuse. Her brother-in-law’s biography of Hugh NIbley mentions Martha’s claim, then dismisses its validity. The contention that Beck has an obsessive need to be admired seems curious as well. In Leaving the Saints, Beck describes the consequences of telling her family of the abuse she suffered and leaving BYU, Utah, and the LDS church: “Death had come…for almost everything familiar: our childhood haunts, our friendships, our jobs, our house, our families” (p 276.) She has lost nearly all contact with her parents and siblings. She says, “I still grieve every day for the people and things I lost when I left the Saints” (p.303.) If Beck were really obsessed with getting praise and approval, is this the path she would have chosen?

Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith is a difficult book for Mormons to read---or review. It is, after all, the story of a woman’s spiritual growth and how it took her out of the Mormon religion and brought her a closer connection to God. While Beck ultimately feels compassion for her father and forgives him, hearing about sexual abuse is troubling, particularly when it involves one of Mormonism’s most prominent intellectual icons. It is disappointing but not surprising that some reviewers have chosen to mount an attack on author Martha Beck rather than a true review of the book.

Beck’s admonition to participants in a workshop at BYU is equally relevant to readers of her book: “Don’t trust me. Trust yourself. If something I said feels right to you, believe it. If it feels wrong, disbelieve it. The choice to believe or disbelieve, that’s what makes us all free” (p.269.) We are all free to read this book and decide for ourselves.

Book Review

In Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith, author Martha Beck describes her intense search to find the “radiant ecstasy” of a connection with God. She relates the story of her spiritual quest, so “passionate and adventurous” that it is “like being in love,” within the framework of her life as a young wife and mother, Brigham Young University instructor, participant in the Mormon religious community, and incest survivor. Though Beck’s writing is at times poignant and achingly sad, her story is ultimately joyous and inspiring. Readers discover how she recovered her “original innocence…as a divine child [of] wonder, ease, and a playful heart…at home in the reality of the present, able to enjoy, to respond, to forgive, and to share the blessings of being alive” (p. 270.)

Beck’s path to enlightenment was not an easy one, however. Numerous times as she sought to connect with the divine, Beck says she “had a sickening feeling…at the moment I really felt the presence of God as a loving parent…something awful would come into my consciousness” (p.75.) She began to recall incidents of ritual sexual abuse by her father, one of the Mormon church’s foremost scholars and apologists. Beck takes her father off of his pedestal to reveal the personal suffering of an intellectually gifted but emotionally barren man. He molested her, Beck believes, as a reaction to his own experience of childhood abuse and the extreme pressure placed upon him to defend LDS Church scripture and doctrines. We share Beck’s journey to forgiveness, through, as she puts it, “one of God’s very best party tricks, the alchemy of suffering that transforms evil and suffering into compassion and joy” (p.127.)

Leaving the Saints is filled with amusing descriptions of Mormon life in Utah. For example, Beck describes the ideal Mormon woman as ”a lot like Martha Stewart, minus the money, the attitude, and the prison time,” and BYU students as “an endless procession of newly-minted Ken and Barbie dolls.” Utah Valley Medical Center is, according to Beck, “a veritable geyser of human infants,” and feminism was known at BYU as the “other ‘F’ word.” Beck describes the Mormon attitude toward sex as “what you’d imagine hearing from Queen Victoria if she’d lived in the 1950’s and joined the John Birch Society.”

In Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith, Martha Beck describes the religion and doctrine negatively, but never the people. The congregation her family belonged to was the best in the world, filled with “earth angels” who demonstrated “kindness, affection, and a real desire to know God.” When she was growing up, Beck’s seven siblings seemed to her “a village of half-grown Vikings…the walking definition of love.” She says that “The faith of most Latter-day Saints is based on…deeply held values…like honesty, kindness, [and] the nuclear family.”

As Beck departed Mormonism, she says she had thought that God had led her home “so that I could heal some of my people….The real reason…was that I had come back to my people, all those beautiful, generous, wounded people, so they could heal me” (p 270.) In Leaving the Saints, Martha Beck invites us to share the joys and sorrows of her path to peace. Readers will find strength and support for their journey as well.