WHEN THE WORLD DIDN'T END

A Hollywood actor, screenwriter, and director reflects on her upbringing in a doomsday cult in the 1970s.

Anchored by diary entries, Turner’s memoir vividly recalls her unconventional upbringing in the cultlike Lyman Family. She was not raised by her mother, Bess, but by other group members who home-schooled her and the other community children. The isolated, hierarchical Lyman commune was led by charismatic “Lord” Mel Lyman, who preached about the dangers of everyone outside their community. He, alongside “Queen” Jessie, reigned over a network of extension communities, all rooted in the knowledge of an impending apocalypse. In January 1975, the Lyman followers were instructed that the global population of “World People” would be extinguished and only their group would ascend in a spaceship to live on Venus. When the ship never materialized, Turner, as the oldest of six children and having already been shuffled among various homes, was relocated to the East Coast with her excommunicated mother, who had abandoned the group altogether. Though the author relished the camaraderie of cooking, farming, cleaning, and being a kid with the other Lyman children, she became more confused and less enchanted once the culture shock of living outside the clan kicked in. Still, she continued writing in her journal, mostly as a means of self-expression. “There have been points in my life when keeping a record of what was happening to me felt like the only power I had,” she writes. The author’s prose is reflective, vivid, and confessional, a rich combination full of striking imagery. Turner found much to reconcile as she entered early adulthood, and she even considered foregoing college to rejoin the Lyman Family. In a memorable closing sequence, the author expresses her disillusionment with the outdated gender hierarchy still in place on the farm.

A moving portrait of a bizarre childhood written with emotional nuance and bittersweet deliverance.