Book Review: Escape by Carolyn Jessop

Saturday, June 15th, 2024, 21:38

Mood: Anxious

Growing up in the United States, we're taught a lot about how nice it is to live in the freest country on the planet. We get to do as we please and this is evident by our ability to own whatever firearm we want, no matter how many people at Walmart it can kill at one time, and use whatever racial or gendered slur we would like to describe some group of people we don't. Eventually, some percentage of us realize that the "freedom" narrative is mostly a lot of propaganda, to help us feel better about our dramatic healthcare and housing costs, while a huge percentage of our taxes go to funding the military. Some other percentage of us remains content with the "freedom" narrative, particularly the "freedom isn't free" narrative about how the military budget needs to be that big to make sure we can keep buying guns, eating hot dogs, and using racial slurs (or something.)

Amidst the partisan back-and-forth between what constitutes freedom, however, is an overlooked problem in the US: child marriage and pregnancy, particularly as they relate to adult men and minor girls. Only since 2018 have states begun to ban child marriages, and only 12 states since then have; four states still do not have a minimum age for marriage. (In fairness, multiple states have pending legislature for child marriage, as of April 2024.) An estimated quarter of pregnancies involving girls aged 14 or younger involve adult fathers, with an average age difference of nine years. Culturally, we associate these massive disruptions to young women's educational attainment and milestones with the third world, or perhaps internally with racial minorities within the US. However, the idea that "other people" are at risk of their daughters marrying or having children young obscures the reality that folks who look and act "just like you" are.

Carolyn Jessop, née Blackmore, wasn't a child when she was married--but she was when she was born into a fundamentalist Mormon sect that later became the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (the FLDS). She grew up in a culture that primed her for sister wives, end times, and obedience; the only way she could get into Heaven would be by the grace of her husband, whoever that was. Her husband, assigned to her by their religion's Prophet, ended up being a fifty-year-old construction businessman named Merrill Jessop. Jessop became Merrill's fourth wife.

What followed for Jessop were decades of abuse: emotional, sexual and, occasionally, physical. While she was allowed to earn a Bachelor's degree, she did not get to major in pre-medicine--her first choice--and instead was permitted by Merrill only to major in elementary education. At first, she enjoyed a career as a second-grade teacher and, later, a web developer. She also became a mother: her greatest passion despite her numerous high-risk pregnancies. Her life's joys and accomplishments were balanced by the trials and tribulations of living with numerous other wives and their dozens of children.

As the FLDS' then-Prophet Rulon Jeffs' health declined, however, and his son Warren began implementing his new, overreaching and bizarre rules, Jessop knew she and her children weren't safe. She knew they had to get out.

Jessop's story, unusual as it may seem to those of us unfamiliar to the goings-on of the American Southwest, is not unique. In 2013, there were an estimated 10,000 remaining members of the FLDS church; many were leaving and have since left. With a key doctrine of the church being "placement marriage", or arranged marriages between husband and wives (like what Jessop experienced), it is safe to estimate that many thousands of American women underwent what Jessop did and for the same reasons. This is just one faith, and doesn't speak to the thousands of minors who get legally married in the US each year, and the hundreds of thousands of babies born to teen parents.

While I initially went into this book, frankly, encouraging myself to count my blessings--sure, perhaps under patriarchy we are all repressed, but aren't some of us the most repressed?--Jessop's incredibly accessible and homespun narrative engendered me to do the opposite. Maybe it was because I saw a bit of myself in her, as we shared a background in education and web development, but I largely think it was her writing style that helped me make the connections I share with you today. Yes, most young women in the US will never know what it's like to have to marry a guy thirty years your senior whom you've known for two days, but we are all subject still to choicelessness in our own ways. (If the GOP continues to have their way with our reproductive healthcare, this will just continue to spiral with each year.) While I found this novel in the true crime section of my town's local independent bookstore, I think a more appropriate shelf would've been for women's issues.

Escape is a true story of survival, endurance, but also of tenderness and softness. Carolyn Jessop manages to take a story that very few of us will ever truly be able to relate to, and write it in such a way that everyone can understand. Her voice lends itself incredibly to memoir, and we are fortunate to have it.

Next, I'll be reviewing A Stolen Life by Jaycee Lee Dugard.