Rift

A Memoir of Breaking Away from Christian Patriarchy

By: Cait West

Narrated by: Cait West

A gripping memoir about coming of age in the stay-at-home daughter movement and the quest to piece together a future on your own terms.

Raised in the Christian patriarchy movement, Cait West was homeschooled and could only wear clothes her father deemed modest. She was five years old the first time she was told her swimsuit was too revealing, to go change. There would be no college in her future, no career. She was a stay-at-home daughter and would move out only when her father allowed her to become a wife. She was trained to serve men, and her life would never be her own.

Until she escaped.

In Rift, Cait West tells a harrowing story of chaos and control hidden beneath the facade of a happy family. Weaving together lyrical meditations on the geology of the places her family lived with her story of spiritual and emotional manipulation as a stay-at-home daughter, Cait creates a stirring portrait of one young woman's growing awareness that she is experiencing abuse. With the ground shifting beneath her feet, Cait mustered the courage to break free from all shed ever known and choose a future of her own making.

Rift is a story of survival. Its also a story about what happens after you survive. With compassion and clarity, Cait explores the complex legacy of patriarchal religious trauma in her life, including the ways she has also been complicit in systems of oppression. A remarkable literary debut, Rift offers an essential personal perspective on the fraught legacy of purity culture and recent reckonings with abuse in Christian communities.

©2024 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (P)2024 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

A Truth-Teller Reads Her Own Memoir!

In her April 4th Eerdman’s interview, Cait West says, “I’ve been called an apostate, a heretic, and a witch. But I don’t take it personally. 🙂 I prefer ‘truth teller.’”

I can think of no better way to begin this review than to say, “Read my friend Cait’s book! She’s a truth teller!”

From the first to the final page, there is so much to love:

* Cait West’s skilled and beautifully crafted writing, like this from the opening page: “If I am alone enough or scared enough, I try to collect the memories, weave them together like lace, like snowflakes.”

* Cait’s honesty about “the complexity of past love and loss and damage” which threads through the book as a steady both/and of emotions and experiences that have shaped who she has become, who she is still becoming.

* Cait’s hope on the final page that, “I have room to love and be loved, to explore the Earth unafraid, to pray or be silent. I am open to the wonder of living.”

Readers on their own journeys—particularly those breaking free from fundamentalism and abusive structures of all sorts—can trust that through the rifting of their own lives, “we can survive, and in the separating, we become something new, always evolving.”

Finally, as an audiobook listener, I have the added advantage of hearing Cait's story read in her own voice--compelling, clear, and kind throughout. Highly recommend!

Incredible story

This is such an important story for anyone who wants deeper understanding of the Christian Patriarchy or Daughters at Home movement. Very well written.

Compelling narrative and beautifully written

I heard about Cait’s book on YouTube from an interview she did with Cults to Consciousness. This is a must read for anyone who is interested in feminism, cults or religion. This is a beautifully written and lovingly crafted book. The narrative flows so effortlessly through this book and you move through the chapters with ease. Cait is a wonderful writer. Her story is probably like many other women in fundamentalist Christianity. Throughout the narrative, you are with her as she moves through her, putting pieces together and finding inner strength until she finds the courage to speak up. This is a wonderful and powerful book and I think it is a must read for anyone interested in these topics, or anyone who wants to hear the stories of women. Excellent read! Probably my favorite book of 2024 so far!

Profound Insights

If you weren’t raised in a strict religious household, you likely have no concept of what life is like for a child who was. In this autobiography, Cait West brings the reader right into her family upbringing, and details not just the list of “not allowed” but also the mind control and thought policing that she endured as she was constantly interrogated by her father and church elders about how much faith she had and what her beliefs were.

I have tremendous empathy for the author and could feel her constant anxiety as she was repeatedly asked about what her sins were and couldn’t even journal about her dreams and desires as that would be entertaining impure thoughts.

Most of the book is about her life before she found a way out and broke ties with her controlling and abusive father. The last quarter of the book brings us into her present life and how she’s been healing through therapy and helping others.

A Must Read

This book is a transparent and thoughtful sharing of this author’s growing up experiences, and there are common threads for countless others in evangelical spaces. Highly recommend
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