When someone escapes from Hawaii to Grand Rapids, Mich., you know they had compelling reasons.
Such was the experience of Cait West, who details her confusing, oppressive upbringing as a daughter of a heavily patriarchal father and compliant mother in her searing and ultimately soaring debut.
From the time she was a little girl growing up in Pennsylvania, West’s life as a daughter was mapped out for her in indelible ink. At the age of 5, she was told for the first time that her swimsuit was immodest and to go change. When she graduated from homeschool (having moved to Colorado and lived nearly off the grid with her family), West felt defeated when she realized that her life would be much of the same—training at home to be a “helpmeet” to her eventual husband—but now she would have no homework to occupy her time. College was out of the question, as was a real job. West knew what was not for her, but what was for her?
Her father, a complicated mix of playfully fond, manipulative, and controlling, wholly held the reins of West’s future. Only he could match her with a potential husband, only he would dictate who that husband would be. In one shocking scene, West’s father selected a young man from their church to “court” her, but not before calling the man’s employer to get a character reference. When the thoroughly bewildered employer voiced his opinion that the young man was gay, the father ignored everything but his own discernment and continued to puppeteer the doomed relationship. He even tried to control his daughter’s feelings, angrily chastising her when she felt strong feelings for someone before they were betrothed. (This unbridled emotion was inappropriate, he said, because it robbed the boy’s future wife of being the only one with a romantic emotional attachment to her husband.)
When West began to chafe under this iron grip of control, she set forth on a trek of freedom, walking away, step by painful step, from the only life and home she had ever known. As she boards an airplane against her father’s wishes, rising to an unknown but hopefully freer life in Michigan, the reader cheers her courage and new agency. As West discovers, in the words of Jane Eyre, “I am no bird, and no net ensnares me,” she takes flight with freedom in her wings.
Throughout the book, West braids her narrative with the geological breaches in the places she has lived, including Pennsylvania, Colorado, Hawaii, and West Michigan. This rich feature underscores the concept of cracking foundations and traversing a widening cleft to get to the other side, where safety and growth beckon.
Memoir lovers and those who are concerned about abuses in the church will find in this book a dynamic new voice to examine and critique the excesses of purity culture and patriarchal systems. Those who were riveted by Shiny Happy People, the documentary of TV’s Duggar family, will be intrigued with how West’s story intersects with those featured in that film.
Anyone who has ever felt trapped in an authoritarian system will understand their own story better as, drawing strength from West’s account, they, too, ponder what it will take to break free. (Eerdmans)
About the Author
Lorilee Craker, a native of Winnipeg, Man., lives in Grand Rapids, Mich. The author of 16 books, she is the Mixed Media editor of The Banner. Her latest book is called Eat Like a Heroine: Nourish and Flourish With Bookish Stars From Anne of Green Gables to Zora Neale Hurston.