The Sound of Gravel

Starred review from November 23, 2015
Wariner is her mother’s fourth daughter and her father’s 39th child. So begins this intense memoir of growing up in a sect of polygamous Mormons who are striving to build a utopia in the Mexican desert. The men tend the cows and do odd jobs in the States, while the women tend their children and their pregnancies and make regular trips into El Paso to pick up welfare benefits. Wariner’s dad is murdered by a rival when the author is three, and her mom replaces him with Lane, whom Wariner comes to abhor. Poverty and jealousy are enormous stressors. Sister-wives fight for resources, and Lane isn’t much of a provider. A fight over which wife deserves a new showerhead leads to Lane viciously beating Wariner’s mother, and she flees with the kids to her parents’ home in California. The author spends blissful months enjoying chocolate ice cream and hot showers before her mother succumbs to Lane’s charms and her own convictions and returns the family to the colony. Squalor and child abuse follow, and the family grinds apathetically along until Lane’s mismanagement of life brings a final crisis. By age 15, Wariner has had enough. Fed up with hearing “It’s God’s will” whenever something goes wrong, she rescues herself and then eventually writes this memoir, which condemns using religion to evade moral responsibility. This well-written book is hard to put down and hard to forget.

Wariner delivers her eye-opening memoir of growing up in Colonia LeBaron, the polygamist Mormon colony in Mexico. In a steady voice, without missing a beat, she describes her life as the thirty-ninth of Ervil LeBaron's forty-two children, which consisted of living in a small house with no running water or electricity, scarce food, and little money. Extended families, multiple step- and half-siblings, and sister-wives are just a few of those who inhabited Colonia LeBaron. At 15, Wariner and her siblings escaped from the colony and lived with their grandparents in California. This audiobook provides a glimpse of Wariner's childhood of food stamps, abuse, and polygamy as well as courage and family. It's a story that will stick with listeners long after the last word. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

Starred review from March 15, 2016

Wariner delivers a powerful and moving memoir about growing up in a polygamist Mormon sect in rural Mexico during the 1970s and 1980s. Thirty-ninth of her father's 42 children, Wariner vividly recounts being raised in a dilapidated house without running water or electricity in the midst of the Mormon utopia her father was trying to build, one in which men were expected to live polygamously. When Wariner's father was murdered, her mother struggled to make ends meet as a single mom. Hard living got harder when her mother remarried, becoming the second wife of a man who turned out to be both a pedophile and unable to support his many children--or his four wives. At age 15, after the discovery of a family secret coupled with the tragic death of her mother and younger brother, Wariner was propelled to leave town with her siblings in tow. The narration by Wariner complements the candid nature of her story, while her monotone reading perfectly highlights just exactly how bleak and disheartening her youth was. VERDICT A captivating and emotional story delivered in a straightforward way without an ounce of self-pity. Recommend to book clubs and fans of The Glass Castle, Stolen Innocence, and other moving coming-of-age stories.--Cathleen Keyser, NoveList, Durham, NC

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.