It was the late sixties, in an America already divided by the war in Vietnam and by growing disillusion with traditional middle-class values. It was a time of "police riots" in Chicago...of flamboyant experimentation with alternative lifestyles... of hippies and flower children.
And it was an era that marked the birth of new -and sometimes bizzare- religous movements: among them, the Children of God.
Deborah Davis, born Linda Berg, lived through those years as the daughter, disciple, and -as she now sees it- the dupe of the Children of God founder, David Berg. In a personal memoir as frightening as it is fascinating, she relives her experiences in the grip of the Children of God and recounts in detail the events that led her to flee the cult and her father's sinister control, even at the risk of her life.
The full story of who David (Moses David) Berg is, of his evangelical heritage, of his descent into the maelstrom, of his spiritual hold on thousands of followers, of his prophetic mystique- all this is told for the first time by the only person capable of telling it honestly and factually.
But this is more than an autobiography. Deborah Davis takes us beneath the surface of headline-making phenomena to probe the reasons why cults happen.