Motorhome Prophecies
A Journey of Healing and Forgiveness
1 of 1 copy available
Carrie Sheffield grew up fifth of eight children with a violent, mentally ill, street-musician father who believed he was a modern-day Mormon prophet destined to become U.S. president someday. She and her seven siblings were often forced to live as vagabonds, remaining on the move across the country. They frequently subsisted in sheds, tents, and, most notably, motorhomes. They often lived a dysfunctional drifter existence, camping out in their motorhome in Walmart parking lots. Carrie attended 17 public schools and homeschool, all while performing classical music on the streets and passing out fire-and-brimstone religious pamphlets—at times while child custody workers loomed.
Carrie's father was eventually excommunicated from the official LDS Church, and she was the first of her siblings to escape the toxic brainwashing of his fundamentalist creed. Declared legally estranged from her parents, Carrie struggled with her mental health during college and for most of her adult life. But she eventually seized control of her life, transcended her troubled past, and overcame her toxic inner voice (and a near death experience)—thanks to the power of forgiveness, cultivated through her conversion to Christianity. She evolved from a scared and abused motorhome-dwelling girl to a Harvard-educated professional with a passion for empowering others to reject the cycles of poverty, depression, and self-hatred.
Motorhome Prophecies is the story of Carrie's unbelievable, yet in many ways, very American journey. It resonates with those trapped in difficult situations and awes all who are enchanted by the depths and resilience of the human spirit.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
March 12, 2024 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781668637654
- File size: 285819 KB
- Duration: 09:55:27
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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January 15, 2024
Journalist and broadcaster Sheffield debuts with a searing memoir of her turbulent childhood and its scars. The fifth of eight children born to a Mormon family, Sheffield spent much of her youth in a motorhome that traversed the country, fleeing “child-custody buttinskies” who sought to remove the author and her siblings from their parents. Lorded over by her father, a violent, self-proclaimed prophet who subjected the author to “indoctrination sessions” on her “evilness and failures,” Sheffield longed for a normal life and left at 18 to attend college. Still, depression and suicidal ideation stalked her into adulthood. Among other episodes, Sheffield describes a horrific assault from one of her schizophrenic brothers when she was 17 and the family clashes it precipitated when her father at first refused to believe her; breaking from Mormonism at 22 and later joining an Episcopalian church; and her efforts to separate childhood spiritual trauma from her adult faith (“abusive, man-made religion is a shoddy substitute for divine Relationship... I was looking for God in all the wrong places”). Though the blow-by-blow catalogues of the author’s health issues and romantic travails can grow stale, readers will be riveted by Sheffield’s unrelenting efforts to make sense of her upbringing (“I’ll spend the rest of my life discerning how God will transform my abuse for his service”) without sensationalizing or downplaying what she went through. This is hard to forget. Agent: Jonathan Bronitsky, Athos.
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