The author recounts her story in a series of episodes that become repetitive in the reading even as it’s clear that she was treated unjustly, at least by civilian standards.
“I was sure I could be a part of the army but not owned by it, that a person could have brains and independent, innovative thoughts” she writes, quickly adding, “I was wrong.” When she ran afoul of the command structure, her career ground to a halt. Army, which had many of the cultish ingredients of her youth, especially the view that “as a woman, you’re either a bitch, a slut, or a dyke.” Even so, and despite her revulsion at superior officers’ defense of torture, Mestyanek Young excelled in leadership skills, working in intelligence in Afghanistan. As a young teenager, the author broke free, attended college, and married at 21, briefly settling into a relationship that was problematic even years after her divorce. “The first rule of cults is you are never in a cult,” writes Mestyanek Young, who grew up in the communal world of the Children of God, led by a self-styled prophet who gathered a group of young followers whom he thought of “as sheep, in need of a shepherd.” Moving from country to country-Brazil, Mexico, Japan-a step ahead of the authorities, the group, as described by the author, was both strict in discipline and extremely free-wheeling in matters of sex, especially sex with minors.
Goal-oriented, driven, and often betrayed, the author recounts time spent in the twin cults of centrifugal Christianity and the American military.
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