In the Days of Rain

May 22, 2017
In this compelling memoir, Stott (Darwin’s Ghost) peers deeply into her family history in order to uncover the reasons her family, particularly her father, were immersed in the Exclusive Brethren, a branch of the Christian evangelical movement Plymouth Brethren that shuns books and mainstream culture. For much of her childhood, Stott couldn’t go to the movies or even to her friends’ houses to play and she lived in fear of the punishment that came from violating the strict separatist rules of the Brethren. On his deathbed, Stott’s father gave her his unfinished memoir and in it she learned more about the sect and the depth of her father’s involvement. Stott’s father, Roger, was a high-ranking minister in the brethren and started working on his own memoir in about 1999, but abandoned it when he had difficulty writing about the sect’s so-called “Nazi years.” Stott learns the sect’s history—that a man named James Taylor Jr. became the leader of the brethren in 1959 and hardened the lines of separation between the sect and the world, banning members from joining professional associations and from eating with nonbrethren, for example. Following a sex scandal involving Taylor, the Stotts ultimately left the Brethren in 1973. Stott shares moments with her father after their departure from the sect, such as listening to Paul Simon’s music, that reveal another side of him. In this affecting memoir, Stott is able to distance herself from her difficult childhood and brilliantly capture the challenges of her family’s days in the brethren. Agent: P.J. Mark, Janklow & Nesbit.

May 15, 2017
A writer rehearses her girlhood in a strict religious cult, the Exclusive Brethren, and how that group affected her family life.Stott has emerged from her harsh, restrictive youth to write some well-received books (Darwin's Ghosts: The Secret History of Evolution, 2012, etc.) and to become a commentator on BBC Radio (radio was prohibited in her house) and a professor (Literature and Creative Writing/Univ. of East Anglia). In childhood, as she shows us clearly and painfully, such a future was inconceivable. She was in the fourth generation of family members belonging to the Exclusive Brethren, a fundamentalist Christian group--they still exist, though in different configurations--that instilled in her a profound fear of Satan and of disobeying approved practices. Although the author tells her own story, her father's experiences receive far more than equal time. He left the Brethren when Stott was a young girl and became a ferocious reader, an actor in local theatrical productions, an adulterer (he later remarried), a gambler, and, sadly, embezzler (he spent some months in prison). Among the most wrenching scenes in a volume that has many are Stott's stories about her father's gambling (his pathetic roulette "system") and her own unmooring from what she had always thought certain. She began having dark dreams and had difficulty adapting to her father's new passions for radio, film, and theater. What eventually rescued her--as it did, in some ways, her father--were books. She became a voracious reader and a curious and eventually admiring investigator of the theories of Darwin, who, she had learned earlier, was an emissary of Satan. Her father had written an unfinished memoir, a project she vowed to complete when he died. The final six weeks of his life provide part of Stott's narrative framework. A troubling yet compelling story of childhood deprivation, liberation, and, ultimately, hope.

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July 1, 2017

Stott (Darwin's Ghosts) offers a compelling and periodically wrenching story of her family's tangled, complicated, and multigenerational relationship with the Exclusive Brethren, a fundamentalist Christian sect. The author learned that women should be subservient and silent; secular influences, such as television and literature, were evil; and that the world was crawling with Satan's Army. As part of the Brethren, the Stott family spent four generations waiting for the end times, but she and her father were both dangerously inquisitive, which ultimately led to their downfall in the sect. Stott's father started his memoir but died before he could finish it; Stott followed through on a promise to take up the task. Her reflections on their relationship provide a captivating foundation, setting this book apart from other cult-survivalist memoirs. VERDICT A well-paced examination on an unusual father-daughter relationship, colored by their involvement in a fundamentalist Christian sect.--Erin Entrada Kelly, Philadelphia

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 1, 2017
Stott's father could not finish his memoir of his family's so-called Nazi years, so upon his death, Rebecca (Darwin's Ghosts, 2012) committed to completing it. The resulting book investigatesthe emotional trauma her family endured in the buildup, the peak years, and the aftermath of their affiliation with the sexist, controlling, punishing religious cult known as the Exclusive Brethren. As the Brethren's exhaustive rules increased, so did the community's anguish. People lost jobs because outside associations were forbidden. Families experienced schisms because eating with anyone outside the Brethren was unclean. Those determined to have violated a rule were shut up, effectivelyimprisoned and driven mad with isolation. Rocked by scandal, the cult eventually implodes, as does Stott's father's behavior and Stott's family. Rather than an invitation to voyeurism, this memoir is a serious examination of how and whyparticularly how a group can match its power with enough dysfunction that its members become suicidal. Stott's look into her father's misguidedness offers readers a simultaneous warning and empathic embrace.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)