內容簡介
內容簡介 「在這本憤慨、充滿熱情的書中，每一個句子都富有意義。」─泰唔士報作者瑞貝卡‧史托特的父親在過世前，自白他長久以來都想要撰寫自己的回憶錄，但總是無法完成，他希望史托特可以完成自己的願望，也就是這本書的由來。史托特一家原是基督教基本教派的教友，他們所屬的教派是封閉的社群，教規相當嚴格，他們相信世界是由惡魔撒旦所統治，所有和教派理念的書都被禁止，所有女性都要戴上頭紗，違反教規的人都會被處罰。史托特的父親原是該教派的牧師，史托特本人雖然長期受到教規的洗禮，但卻無法壓抑天生的好奇心，總是問出一些「危險」的問題，但事實上，身為牧師的父親對於教規卻也不是毫無疑問。一九七零年代，因為一場性醜聞，讓史托特的父親再也無法忽視心中的疑問，毅然決然帶著一家人脫離該教派。史托特在本書中將父親、自己和家人們的故事寫出來，描述在該教派規範下的生活，以及一家人脫離教派後的狀況。WINNER OF THE 2017 COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD In the vein of Bad Blood and Why be Happy when you can be Normal?: an enthralling, at times shocking, and deeply personal family memoir of growing up in, and breaking away from, a fundamentalist Christian cult. As heard on Jeremey Vine `At university when I made new friends and confidantes, I couldn't explain how I'd become a teenage mother, or shoplifted books for years, or why I was afraid of the dark and had a compulsion to rescue people, without explaining about the Brethren or the God they made for us, and the Rapture they told us was coming. But then I couldn't really begin to talk about the Brethren without explaining about my father...' As Rebecca Stott's father lay dying he begged her to help him write the memoir he had been struggling with for years. He wanted to tell the story of their family, who, for generations had all been members of a fundamentalist Christian sect. Yet, each time he reached a certain point, he became tangled in a thicket of painful memories and could not go on. The sect were a closed community who believed the world is ruled by Satan: non-sect books were banned, women were made to wear headscarves and those who disobeyed the rules were punished. Rebecca was born into the sect, yet, as an intelligent, inquiring child she was always asking dangerous questions. She would discover that her father, an influential preacher, had been asking them too, and that the fault-line between faith and doubt had almost engulfed him. In In the Days of Rain Rebecca gathers the broken threads of her father's story, and her own, and follows him into the thicket to tell of her family's experiences within the sect, and the decades-long aftermath of their breaking away.
