First published 2003
Elizabeth Smart sleeps peacefully in her Salt Lake City bedroom when a knife blade wakes her in June 2002. The fourteen year old finds herself torn from her devout Mormon family and dragged into the Utah mountains by Brian David Mitchell and his wife Wanda Barzee. Her captors believe they serve God through their twisted religious visions. They strip away Elizabeth's identity and innocence during nine months of captivity in the wilderness above her family home. The world searches for the missing girl while she endures physical and emotional torture just miles away. When Elizabeth finally returns in March 2003, she comes back transformed. The joyful reunion quickly turns dark as the truth emerges about what Mitchell, a serial predator, and Barzee inflicted on their young victim. This story captures the collision between Elizabeth's sheltered world and the dangerous reality of her abductors' delusions.
Genres: biography, historical-fiction, abuse, crime
Vibes: dark, emotional, intimate, suspenseful
Tropes: captive, fish-out-of-water, transformation
Setting: Salt Lake City, Utah
Period: 2002, 2003
342 pages · Mass Market Paperback · Avon
Content warnings: abuse, child-abuse, kidnapping, physical-abuse, sexual-assault, torture