In the Days of Rain: A Daughter, a Father, a Cult

Stott (Darwin's Ghosts) offers a compelling and periodically wrenching story of her family's tangled, complicated, and multigenerational relationship with the Exclusive Brethren, a fundamentalist Christian sect. The author learned that women should be subservient and silent; secular influences, such as television and literature, were evil; and that the world was crawling with Satan's Army. As part of the Brethren, the Stott family spent four generations waiting for the end times, but she and her father were both dangerously inquisitive, which ultimately led to their downfall in the sect. Stott's father started his memoir but died before he could finish it; Stott followed through on a promise to take up the task. Her reflections on their relationship provide a captivating foundation, setting this book apart from other cult-survivalist memoirs.