Author: Leah Sottile
Publisher: Twelve Books
Release Date: June 21, 2022
Page Count: 320
Rating: 5 stars out of 5
Read book blurb here
If you read this book as a true-crime story, expecting a trial and verdict and neatly tied-up resolution, you will be disappointed. If you are looking for an in-depth study of the factors that created this bizarre case, Leah Sottile's fascinating well-researched account provides it in spades.
"At first, the story of Chad and Lori and the missing children looked like a complicated version of a stock true-crime trope: a love affair gone wrong ... [...] but the story is so much more complicated than that. This is a story of faith, and of all the things we allow ourselves to believe."
Sottile takes us down a dark path of LDS history and theology and carefully shows how extremism has been "bred in the bone" of the church of Latter-Day Saints. Chad and Lori were part of the AVOW movement ("Another Voice of Warning") that encouraged preparation for the coming apocalypse and the subsequent survival of the chosen 144,000 in tent cities somewhere in Idaho. AVOW was full of preppers with a purpose and they devoured Chad's "novels" about the coming upheaval.
Chad was a star in the movement, and Lori his eager follower. And why wouldn't she be - when Chad told her she was a goddess in a former existence and destined to save their people? Lori's parents were firm believers in "sovereign citizenry" and not paying taxes, Lori's relationship with her brother Alex Cox was very unhealthy and Lori had an unfortunate heritage of mental illness from her father.
At first I was skeptical, but Sottile makes a strong case that Daybell was a leader in the Warren Jeffs' mold (soft spoken and very manipulative) and that Lori was suffering from mental illness.
Sottile offers a unique perspective and rich background with much boots-on-the-ground research into this complicated case. 5 stars.
I received an ARC from the publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.
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