Mestayanek Young was born into The Children of God, what she comes to understand as a religious sex cult. The first half of her memoir documents her time with The Children--up until age 15 when she demands emancipation. Before that time she is repeatedly abused and sexually assaulted by members of her family and extended family, especially the "uncles" given charge of punishing (beating and molesting) the children. Their mothers have to stand back because women are subservient and required to participate in "free love" themselves. Daniella is born to her fourteen-year-old mother, father unknown and eventually had six siblings--before their mother was forty. Eventually the Family (as it is currently known) declared sex with children under 16 illegal--not in time to save Daniella's virginity--but perhaps in enough time to spare her becoming a teen mother, not by choice.

The story of her time with the family and then her high school and college years outside the cult take up the first and second parts of the book, followed by a section about her time in the military. The whole book is consuming and a satisfying read, but I wish it had been two books instead of one.

Daniella's time in the military is nearly as harrowing as her life in the cult, and infuriating for different betrayals.

On the Children of God's founding

Berg [their prophet] saw these young people [counterculture folks, hippies] as sheep, in need of a shepherd, and began to corral them into his flock. But the think nobody ever tells you about the shepherd analogy is the shepherds always eat their sheep in the end.

An army captain and Daniella's boyfriend for a while, a married man who pursued her relentlessly,

I used to think that women who said they were scared were just being dramatic. But the more I get used to what it's like over here, the more I think that you probably will get raped on this deployment.

The environment had been toxic for women all right--that was true army wide--but in this case, nobody had wanted to look deep enough to find the real, systemic causes.

(duh, but still, tough revelation)