The King's English Bookshop

Zoe Murdock will read from and discuss her new novel, Torn by God: A Family’s Struggle with Polygamy. 

Inspired by true events, Torn by God, is a riveting family drama that takes place in 1959 in a small Mormon town in Utah.

It chronicles the devastation brought upon the Sterling family when the father has a vision that leads him to become involved with a local polygamist group run by a self-serving fundamentalist. The father comes to believe that the Mormon Church never should have rescinded polygamy. Even though the practice is now against the law and grounds for excommunication, he feels it is something God demands of him. When her father gets more and more involved with the polygamist group, twelve-year-old Beth watches helplessly as her mother sinks into depression and illness. When he leaves town to build a church for the polygamists, the family is cast off by the Mormon community, and it is up to Beth to take care of her sick mother and her little brother.