Uncultured

Daniella Mestyanek Young spent her childhood inside a commune in Brazil, part of The Children of God, a movement also known as The Family. Her parents were senior members of the group. Her mother had been married off to the leader at thirteen and worked for years as his secretary. Daniella's great-grandmother had donated the land for one of the group's earliest communes in Texas.

The group's strict rules shaped every part of Daniella's life. Punishments were presented as holy discipline and divine love, but in reality she endured physical, emotional and sexual abuse. She was also kept from receiving a conventional education.

At fifteen, she left The Family and made her way to Texas, determined to build a freer and more independent life. She enrolled in high school, excelled there, and later graduated first in her college class. She then joined the military to train as an intelligence officer, hoping at last to belong somewhere. Stationed in Afghanistan and surrounded by men in the desert, she found that her new surroundings resembled the world she had fled.

Written with urgency and frankness, the memoir examines how dangerous group mentalities can take hold when no one recognizes them, and how many women feel forced to reshape themselves in order to survive.