This book was a huge disappointment. Before I read it, I was a major fan of Martha Beck's. I read Expecting Adam soon after my own baby was born with Down Syndrome, and it expressed the journey our family took from grief to inexpressible joy. I attended a book discussion later that year and met Martha Beck, and I loved the woman. She was irrepressible. Joyous and genuine and loving. In the years since, I have recommended her to many people, and have sent Expecting Adam to several people who found themselves the parents of children with DS. Then last year I began to hear buzz about Leaving the Saints. Beck talked, in Expecting Adam, about being a former Mormon, but she treated the subject gently. As she began to appear on talk shows and in conversation about Leaving the Saints, however, it came out that she is the daughter of a well-respected Mormon scholar. And that her new book did NOT treat the "Saints" gently. I did not want to read it. I wanted to keep my mental image of this lovely, generous woman. But a friend loaned us a copy, and when my husband told me it was not vindictive, I decided to read it. He assured me the "voice" we both loved in Expecting Adam was intact in Leaving the Saints. Having now read it myself, however, I simply do not know what book he read. It was certainly not the one I read. Leaving the Saints is anything BUT gentle and generous. It's bitter and mocking and scornful. At least, part of it is. In truth, there are two authorial voices speaking here. During the chapters where she is simply telling her story, I hear shades of the old-Martha: a genuine person, severely wounded and in pain, true, but honest with herself and with her readers. I suspect those are the chapters my husband focused on, and indeed, the "voice" is very similar to that of Expecting Adam. But there's another voice here too. A cynical and bitter one. And while I can certainly understand why she might be bitter toward her father, her scorn toward all Mormons in general is beyond my comprehension (unless it's a failed attempt at humor perhaps). This isn't just her story. Her story is watered down by a half-credible (and half-baked) exposé of Mormon culture. For instance, in Chapter 2, she describes at some length the Mormon temple ceremony (which has certainly been done before), but she stops short of giving all the details with a parenthetical note to Mormon readers that since she hasn't told any of the expressly-forbidden secrets, they are to please leave her entrails alone. And in fact, several more times she makes snide little entrail comments (mind those entrails!). What's up with that? I simply do not see what this adds to her memoir of childhood abuse. And there are so many ridiculous comments, like that men at Brigham Young University must wear socks because the hair on human ankles is an extension of pubic hair. At one point, she even insults her readers by saying, "...the tissues of my perineum (look it up)" as if we are too stupid to know what a perineum is. I never enjoy this self-important, mocking tone of voice, regardless who is speaking, or to whom they are referring. I was raised in a church similarly peculiar in culture and rigidly legalistic (Mom, I swear, I am speaking as gently here as I possibly can). My own father was virtually absent for much of my life and probably abusive, at least emotionally (though not, thank God, sexually). God knows I am scarred as a result and that I deal with ongoing anger toward him. I also have a deep revulsion toward the culture I was raised in. Some day I may feel the need to express some of this in a book. But I would never make fun of the wonderful, earnest people who attended that church and embraced those beliefs. I respect that they were God-fearing (perhaps "fearing" is the key word here) and those beliefs were held sacred. Because I respect their belief, I would treat it with respect, were I to write a memoir. But that makes it harder for me to understand Beck's choice here, much less overlook it. All in all, this could have been a compelling story. It could have been healing for many women who have dealt with similar abuse in the past, and for others raised in the Mormon church who are looking for answers elsewhere. But whatever credibility she had with me, she lost by the end of Chapter 2. There are better exposés of Mormonism. There are better memoirs of childhood abuse. Unsure of which it is, Leaving the Saints fills neither role effectively.