You'll notice that mystery writers dominate my reading list. It's not that I don't like other kinds of books, but mysteries are more fun. Once in a while, though, I'll just get all crazy and read something else.
"I Heard You Paint Houses"
July 14, 2008 - Charles Brandt tells the story of Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran, a mob hitman who claims to have killed Jimmy Hoffa. Brandt is a former prosecutor who recorded interviews with Sheeran over a period of five-years or so. Much of the book is a transcription of Sheeran's words, as he talks about his relationship with Hoffa and with the mob bosses who wanted him dead.
One of those bosses was Russell Bufalino, who made his home in Northeast PA. I'm only a few chapters in, and already Sheeran has made references to roads and restaurants and motels in the area. I had no idea that NEPA was so closely tied to the Hoffa case.
Based on the early chapters, it seems that the hit on Hoffa was brought about because Hoffa didn't want to play the mob's game anymore, at least not the way they wanted to play it. Hoffa had recently been released from federal prison in Lewisburg, PA and was trying to reclaim his position as head of the Teamsters. Not everyone thought that was such a good idea, but Hoffa didn't seem to care. Sheeran asserts that he (Sheeran) was trying to walk a fine line, doing his best to warn his friend Hoffa about which direction the wind was blowing while not betraying his loyalty to Bufalino.
After this initial set-up, the author takes us back to Sheeran's early years, growing up Irish-Catholic in Philly. He was a bit of a hoodlum, but nothing serious. Then, he joined the Army and went off to fight in World War Two. Sheeran and his unit saw some of the most intense fighting in Europe and that experience, Sheeran and the author contend, basically turned him into a killer. When he returned from the war, Sheeran found his way into some union jobs and quickly learned how to skim from the system. It's not a big stretch to see how he could work his way up to mob hitman.
June 21, 2008 - Escape (Carolyn Jessop with Laura Palmer). Carolyn Jessop recounts how she and her eight children escaped from the FLDS Church, a radical polygamist sect along the Utah/Arizona border. The information she gave the authorities helped lead to the arrest and conviction of Warren Jeffs.
The book is just over 400 pages long. The first chapter details the night Jessop and her children fled. In the ensuing chapters, Jessop tells her story chronologically from her childhood to her marriage; through the births of her eight children; and, eventually, her efforts to build a new life outside the FLDS.
The first 1/4 of the book is rather rough going due mostly, I think, to all the names and family relationships that are introduced. Once Jessop marries, the story focuses more on her immediate family (husband, sister wives, children) so it's easier to remember who's who. After her marriage is also where the action, if you will, begins. Jessop tells a harrowing story that is difficult to comprehend but impossible to put down.
The culture to which Jessop belonged is quite alien from anything that I (and, I suspect, most readers) have encountered. One of the early chapters begins with Jessop recalling the childhood cry of "Let's play apocalypse!" You can get a pretty good hint right there about exactly what people in the FLDS, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, were taught to believe. Abuse was prevalent in many forms. Add to that the fact that a child's life was controlled by her parents and a few powerful sect leaders who were not very tolerant of disobedience, and you get a picture of a repressive culture that offered very few options, especially for girls.
Jessop recalls being a young girl with a love of learning and a desire to be a doctor. Then, at 18, she was forced to become the fourth wife of 50-year-old Merrill Jessop, a high-ranking member of the FLDS (Jessop calls it a cult. Merril Jessop is currently the head of the FLDS ranch in Texas that recently got raided by the authorities). According to the author, the deal included a provision that she would still be allowed to go to college, but would become a teacher, not a doctor. Jessop worried that her new husband wouldn't allow that, but she did get her degree and teach for a few years in an FLDS school.
Over the course of 17 years, Jessop had eight children. Her last four pregnancies were risky, but Jessop continued to have sex with her husband because doing so seemed to lessen the odds that her children would be abused by their father or his other wives.
As the years went on, a man named Warren Jeffs claimed more and more power in the cult. For most of those years, Jeffs' father was still recognized as the leader. But, he was old and infirm, and Warren acted as the de facto head until officially taking over when his father died.
As Jessop tells it, Warren Jeffs ruled through fear and paranoia. Life in the cult became progressively more restrictive under his influence. Wives were routinely taken from their husbands and forced to marry other men; teenage boys could be expelled from the cult for little or no reason; girls were forced into marriages at younger and younger ages. Jessop saw which way things were going and, fearing that her oldest daughter might soon be forced to marry Jeffs, plotted to escape. She worked and waited for more than a year before finally having an opportunity to flee.
In many ways, escape was just the beginning of the battle for Jessop. Her older children did not want to leave (one daughter eventually went back); her husband pursued her and fought her for custody of the children; she suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; she had very little money and relied on state and federal aid. But, as Jessop will tell you, she had hope. And that, she says, was more than she ever had inside the confines of the FLDS.