My horrified fascination with cults and high-control religious groups began early in my adult life and continues to this day. Name a memoir written by a survivor of religious trauma and/or abuse and the odds are good that I’ve read it. So when I learned that Tia Levings, an incredibly brave woman whose story featured heavily throughout the Amazon Prime documentary Shiny Happy People, was coming out with a book, I smashed that want-to-read button on Goodreads so quickly and so hard, I’m surprised my phone screen didn’t shatter. And when that book, A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy (St Martin’s Press, 2024), was offered up for review on NetGalley, I went running. I knew this book was going to be incredible.
And I was not disappointed.
But I was shaken. Deeply. It’s that kind of book.
Several times, I had to put my kindle down and take a few deep breaths. Several more times, I had to pull out the tissues, and during one moment, I needed to stop and hug my daughter (still crying, of course).
Before I get into the meat of this review, please know that while this is an utterly amazing memoir that deserves to be read far and wide, it’s intense. It’s a LOT. It’s probably the heaviest escape memoir I’ve ever read, and I don’t say this lightly, because survivor stories are always heavy with the pain and trauma they’ve suffered at the hands of their cult. That said, Tia Levings’ writing is raw; she doesn’t hold back on walking her readers through her trauma and letting them know that this isn’t just her story. This is the story of a lot of women who have gotten pulled into fundamentalism.
This memoir revolves around themes of abuse (spiritual and religious, physical, emotional, and sexual), Christian fundamentalism, domestic violence, misogyny, Christian patriarchy, fear, shame, fear of hell and loss of salvation, female submission, control, isolation, Christian Dominionism, Christian nationalism, Christian domestic discipline, quiverfull theology, ATI and Bill Gothard, Reform and Calvinist theology, repeat pregnancies, rape, painful sexual encounters, severe medical events, death of an infant, grief, diminishment and loss of self, dissociation, and mental illness. Take care of yourself when you read this book. It’s incredible the entire way through, but even if you’re not a survivor of religious abuse and trauma like Ms. Levings, there are potentially triggering topics on every page. Survivors will see a reflection of the nightmares they lived through; non-survivors will be shocked and appalled at the devastation wreaked upon women and children in the name of God.
It was a family move to Florida, followed by her family’s eventual involvement with a Baptist megachurch, that set Tia Levings down a twisted path of Christian fundamentalism, patriarchy, and female submission. Due to a combination of heavy church influence and lack of family finances, Tia walked away from the idea of college (too worldly for Christian girls like her, anyway) and instead waited for God to send her a husband. And a husband was indeed sent – though by whom, I’m not sure – in the form of Allan, a Christian Air Force veteran who began abusing Tia even before they became engaged. But with the ideas of female submission and forgiveness firmly planted in Tia’s mind, she went along with what she’d been taught and married Allan anyway. It’s what a good Christian girl does.
Her long-anticipated wedding night was terrible, sounding like something straight out of Debi Pearl’s account of her own honeymoon (if you’re not familiar with the story, you can Google it, but I’m warning you, it’s horrific, and beware, because she and her awful husband are still some of the louder voices in this harmful patriarchal movement), and life only spiraled downward from there. “It’s my job to teach you what we believe,” Tia’s husband informed her. Another friend shamed her by telling her, “If you’re feeling personal ambition, Tia, you need to repent and ask Jesus to help you die to yourself.” It’s no wonder that she slowly began to feel like she was vanishing from her own life, using dissociation as a coping mechanism and losing large chunks of time as baby after baby joined their family.
Fundamentalist Christianity uses severe control tactics in order to keep women cowering and keep the men in charge, and this is evident in every sentence of this book. I scrawled down horrifying quote after horrifying quote in my notebook as I paged furiously through my kindle copy: “You disgust me with your opinions and individualism.” “The elders feel that women getting together is dangerous, because of our propensity to stray from spiritual topics into gossip when unattended by a head of household.” And, most chilling and stomach-turning of all, this quote, uttered by the husband of the woman in question: “Well, it’s time we should be getting home. Mommy’s getting a spanking.” And for context, the mother being referred to here was both pregnant and nursing at the time. And this wasn’t said in jest. This adult woman was going to be forcefully spanked like a child, as punishment, by her husband, upon returning to their house. This is an aspect of fundamentalism that Ms. Levings experienced as well. I nearly lost my lunch while reading the scenes that dealt with Christian domestic discipline.
Tia and her children eventually do make it out, but only barely, and the long-term effects ripple on today. Her story is told in such a way that you can feel her isolation, the mind-numbing boringness of it all, her desperation to give her kids the best life possible in the midst of all of this, her desire for more. And yet, her survival tactics of denial and downplaying make complete sense in the context of her religious indoctrination; this memoir is the best I’ve ever read at explaining the hows and whys of indoctrination and its effect on decision-making and survival.
This book is going to make some waves. Not just among survivor communities, but also among the general public. Because at the heart of it, this book, along with Tia Levings’ vibrant social media presence, serves as a warning: THIS is how Christian fundamentalists and nationalists want us all to live. All the abuse, the pain, the isolation that she suffered, this is the reality that people on the far right are trying to craft for everyone in the country. Learn it, recognize it, and join the fight against it.
If I could give this book more than five stars, I would. This is one of those books that I think no amount of words could ever do justice to in a review. It’s powerful, it’s masterful, it will shake you to your very core. Read this, but take care of yourself while you do. It’s not an easy read. Read it, then tell everyone you know about it so that they read it too, and are aware of how devastating patriarchal fundamentalist Christianity can be.
If you’re a survivor of religious trauma and/or spiritual abuse and are in need of support, please visit The Vashti Initiative. We’re here for you.
Huge thanks to NetGalley, Tia Levings, and St Martin’s Press for providing me with an early copy for review.
A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy will be available on August 6th, 2024. Support your local bookstores!
She's probably at the library... 