Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review Tia Levings heart-wrenching memoir. I discovered Tia on social media shortly before the airing of the Shiny Happy People documentary and was immediately transfixed by what she had to share, after being raised in a very traditional patriarchal church. So much of Levings story resonated with me, and I saw what could have been in her story, had I not left the church as a young adult. I appreciate Levings candid and openness in sharing her story and bravery. A must-read.

Wow, this book captivated me. I loved it because, it is easy to think that people who get caught up in religious extremist groups are incapable of making their own decisions or are more susceptible to “groupthink”. However, reading Tia’s book makes it clear that this is not the case. Reading about the inner workings of these types of groups was fascinating and I can’t imagine the courage it took to flee that life. I was thankful she had people in her life she trusted and could turn to when she needed help, and that she is using her experience to advocate for others who might be in the same situation.

This was a very sad read, and at times hard to read, but it was also very important.And I really enjoyed reading this.

I found the religious fundamentalism particularly fascinating, and would’ve loved to go a little deeper into some of that— especially in the context of today’s political climate— although I recognize that this memoir likely wasn’t the the appropriate place to do that. Even so, I also would’ve liked the book in general to go a little deeper.

The memoir talks often about the author’s experience basically masking her trauma, and while reading, I got the sense that the author wasn’t yet ready to fully unmask. I was absolutely gripped though when the author did let her emotions bleed onto the page, rather than simply recount her experiences.

This harrowing and beautifully written memoir explores the author’s journey into —and eventual escape from—fundamentalist Christianity. It recounts how extreme patriarchal theology enabled her abusive husband’s violence against her, and how changing her beliefs empowered her to leave her marriage. Full review at BookBrowse: https://www.bookbrowse.com/mag/reviews/index.cfm/ref/pr312256

The religion described in these pages is one where scriptural gatekeepers peddle an androcentric faith system of female subjugation and obedience to their male spouses. If he is unhappy, that is her fault. If he bangs her head against the wall, that is also her fault. If she is sitting vigil at a hospital for a seriously ill infant whose chest cavity is flayed open, the mother might be subject to this response from her husband and, you got it—it’s her fault:

“You’re a shit mother, Tia. And a shit Christian. And I’m sick of you being up here instead of home where you belong. It was a bad idea coming up here. It’s too hard on everyone. You’re a special kind of idiot to think I’m not going to take the kids and leave you. I could do it too. I can make sure you come home to an empty house and never see any of us ever again.”

This story is so heartbreaking because the women who populate Tia’s world seem driven by a sincere desire to please God. But this cherished faith system of love and hope is being manipulated to gain control over them, their bodies, and their self-determination.

Tia’s road to freedom was not easy, and bravery must have seem an impossible asset to muster. It was for children’s sake that she knew she must dig deep and make a change.

Many thanks to St. Martin Press and NetGalley for providing this eARC.

The author writes about her marriage to an abusive, mentally unstable man, and how her fundamentalist "Christian" community preached that things would improve if she could just learn to be a better wife.
What?! A bunch of white, power-hungry, misogynistic, entitled men touting Jesus as a way to justify their perverse and selfish behavior? Who woulda thought. Kudos to Ms. Levings for finally getting the hell out of dodge. Now if we could do something about all of these exact same “Christian” men trying to run the country...
Thanks to #netgalley and #stmartinspress for this #arc of #awelltrainedwife by #tialevings in exchange for an honest review.

This book is a profound and poignant masterpiece that evokes intense emotional reactions. While it captivated and moved me, it also deeply affected my soul. I was consumed with conflicting emotions of love and hate, and the tears I shed while immersed in its pages surpassed any previous experience with a memoir. Undoubtedly, the depth of emotion elicited by this book makes it a worthwhile and unforgettable read.

A Well-Trained Wife by Tia Levings is a very powerful, important but tough read. The author chronicles her life in the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement and its patriarchal society. I always love learning about different lifestyles and this one is scary!!

This was a really powerful memoir from a woman who survived an abusive marriage and the Christian fundamentalist religion. I thought her writing was moving and brutally honest. However, there were several areas I wish she had spent more time exploring (like her childhood and her family of origin's experiences with religion). It would have been interesting to me how she sort of 'reprogrammed' her brain after leaving this environment. There was a lot of detail in the middle of the book, but not as much towards the end. There were also parts of the book that I didn't feel like I could connect to very much, but this might just be because of my personal experiences. I applaud Levings for telling her story and for ensuring that her children escaped that environment.

This is one of those books that is amazing, but destroys your soul. I loved and hated this book. I cried so much, more than I have ever while reading a memoir. It is absolutely worth all of the emotion attached to it.

This book hit close to home. Being raised & conditioned to be the perfect wife starting at a young age I found myself intertwined in the careful weaving of the authors own predicament. The strength they were tasked with to not only survive but to thrive drives home the importance of telling our own stories & letting our own truth be known.

This was such a good book! Tia is so relatable even though her experiences are a much more extreme version of my own. I appreciated the voice she gives to women everywhere who are trying to reconcile what they grew up being told with what their hearts actually believe. An excellent read for anyone trying to understand their own religion and beliefs, or anyone curious about what it looks like for many women in a marriage.

A Well-trained Wife details Levings’ descent from strict Baptist to Gothard woman (think the Duggars) to Calvinist following the model of Puritan Jonathan Edwards. Levings quotes “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” footnote: the basic idea is that God is doing all he can to hold back from sending man into the pit of a literally fiery hell. Not only is he not that into you; he loathes you. Some images that struck me when I first read it were God about to open the floodgates upon man; man dangling as a spider over the fiery pit. It is also a call to seek forgiveness in Christ, who can save mankind from its deserved fate. (But only the few elect will receive that salvation, so be afraid anyway.) a sermon I know because we taught it in high school junior English (American Literature) to give the students a sense of Puritan beliefs. Edwards (1703-1758) was a Great Awakening (1730–1755) minister, so he came after the earliest American Puritans, after the Salem witch trials (1692-3). But his fire and brimstone homilies drove some believers to suicide.

It’s hard for a modern secularist to imagine why anyone would find themselves in a position to think this sort of spirituality could be righteous or in any way helpful. Levings’ narrative of her experiences show the reader exactly how this happens.

Before I go on, I want to note that I’m adding this book review to my School Library Lady blog as well as to Substack. With all the craziness going on right now in the book challenge/ban arena, there will be those who believe, considering what happens to Levings, that a book like this has no place in a high school library. Clearly I’m not one of them. As I’ve said often, terrible things happen to adolescents and pretending they don’t puts them in danger. Levings was very young when making her life-altering decisions based on her understanding of God and God’s plan for her. Some teens, particularly girls, will see themselves in Levings. So, I’m going there. If we can teach the origins of American Calvinism in high school English, we can also have a look at how it plays out hundreds of years later.

Levings grew up in a strict Baptist household, albeit one that was within the norms of conservative evangelism/Christian patriarchy. Not fulfilling for a girl with ambition, but not physically dangerous moment to moment.

In her desire to serve God as that mission is granted in Christian patriarchy (subservient wife/dutiful mother), Levings falls further into unhealthy religious views and depends on her (seriously unwell) husband for guidance, ultimately landing in two cults. Out of fear, she looks for a “new mentor to help me solve my personal ambition, before I headed for hell and took my babies with me. I knew I needed more help—books and Bible verses weren’t enough to prevent dents beneath the wallpaper when Allan slammed my head.”

She finds her first cult through Gothard women at her church, followers of Bill Gothard and the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP) which holds that women should obey men in every way in all of life’s forums: home, school, workplace, and marriage. TV’s “Nineteen Kids and Counting” Duggars are IBLP followers/Gothard folks. (Of course, now we know how well that worked out, with oldest son Josh incarcerated for child pornography. He also molested his sisters, but the statute of limitations ran out on that.)

“I’d asked Judith if I could sit at her feet and learn, like it said about older women teaching the younger in Titus. I got to join the mother club of Gothard women spreading through First Baptist. We sat together and nursed our babies, discussing Scripture, child training, recipes, and household rules.”

Levings learns that the group follows “biblical principles, not instincts.” By this, they mean to have ‘quiverful families’—that is, lots of kids (a quiverful). They don’t use birth control, ever. They practice blanket training, which is basically child abuse of infants. (Putting them on a blanket with a toy out of reach and then hitting them if they try to crawl off the blanket to get it.) Levings is even told that she can’t wear jeans, not only because it's tempting to men, but is even tempting to her two-year-old toddler.

When Levings refuses to blanket train her kids, Judith nodded. “‘That’s fine. But setting up your child to be rebellious puts them in danger of hell. Is that what you want?’ Hot acid rose in my throat, triggering an old and familiar stomachache. What if my children were left behind? What if they burned in hell, and it was my fault? What if Y2K came and the clocks never rolled over and everything exploded, and we died? Was I being the kind of mother who could bring her children to salvation? Maybe I should try one more time.’”

Levings has babies in rapid succession, with one particularly tragic result.

She stops for a beat to show how mean medical professionals can be to postpartum women, another bit of info I can vouch for and that it might be good for teens to read and prepare themselves for when the time comes.

Levings’ husband isn’t satisfied with their relationship and seems to need to degrade his wife further. He loses jobs through his temper, removes the family from support systems, and physically abuses Levings. He decides to become a Calvinist.

”Our new pastor explained. Humans are depraved worms in need of a savior but we’re such filthy sinners—insects, really—that we don’t deserve to be saved. Thankfully, a limited few are elected for heaven. Christ and His grace are irresistible to the chosen—we’re unable to say no to God. Even if we try, it’s only a matter of time and suffering until we’re broken and returned to Him. This is why Christianity hurts. Suffering aligns us with Christ, and it’s a good thing when love hurts—that’s how you know it’s real.”

(I happened to read this the same day I read: Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. - 1 John 4:7 Just thought you might want a counterpoint.)

At this point, the abusive relationship becomes bizarre, unthinkable. Allan has determined that it’s okay for women to have sexual pleasure, so he will command Levings to have orgasms. But women also need direction and that means they need “spankings.” I’m using the quotes because there is serious physical abuse involved.

“‘They have threads on what constitutes spankable offenses. How to conduct a spanking, how to use time-outs and the corner, and what happens afterward.’
“‘You want to put me in time-out?’
“‘It’s often used in conjunction with physical discipline.’ He hurried to his next point. ‘CDD repairs problems in the marriage. And it’s done in love. Every spanking resolves with intercourse.’
“‘So, it’s sexual.’ My stomach clenched. Wife-spanking was kink in church clothes.

Levings believes that a good wife protects the family image more than her own safety. She goes along.

The reader wonders how Levings will find her way out of this. She quotes Fred Rogers on looking for the helpers. But Rogers was quoting his mother telling him what to do in scary situations. Normal scary situations, where there would be helpers in the environment. As we know, the helpers don’t come from inside the cult. The abused have to look outside. Levings is able to do this online, through a community called Trapdoor. “The topics we studied there taught me women supporting women led to ideas. To underground networks and whispers that led to freedom and change.”

Levings starts to have two lives and her husband doesn’t know about her experiments with freedom. She marvels at the hypocrisy of her church fellows during the aughts.

“The Christians we knew were angry about the burkas we saw on the news. It was un-Christian, they said, to force women to be invisible and uniform. But I silently laughed at that. American Christians had burkas too. I wore one. The denim jumper was the American burka.”

Even religious instruction is out of bounds if it is conducted by women. “Leah shared she also wanted a woman’s Bible study or book group, but she’d been cautioned to stop asking. ‘The elders feel that women getting together is dangerous, because of our propensity to stray from spiritual topics into gossip when unattended by a head of household.’”

Levings reminds the reader that patriarchy isn’t actually good for many men. (My feeling is that it generally exists to feed one ego, that of the ‘prophet,’ church leader, etc.) “Winning didn’t feel like having won. At the end of his religious quest for covenantal belonging, Allan appeared more whipped and exhausted than triumphant patriarch, without spark or fight, without spirit or zeal. His shoulders bent with burden and regret, like an ox caught belly-deep in mud.”

Levings finally comes to the most important questions about her cult.
“What was I getting from this faith? Peace, love, joy? No—that’s not how I felt at church. Reassurance of eternal security? No—I still begged God to save me anytime the intersection of death felt close. A sense of belonging with Special Christians doing life right? I belonged, alright. I belonged too much. But what if we weren’t ‘doing it right’?”

Levings does step outside the cult on a very dangerous night when it appears her husband is about to kill her. She finds the helpers.

“Every day it was as if the more I made choices that saved me, the more others showed up to help save me too. The world, actually, was beautiful.”

And that is an excellent lesson for teens to learn.

This book was amazing beyond belief. I can actually relate to some of her story because I was also raised as a conservative Catholic in my childhood and felt obligated to follow God's teachings without questioning it. Although I never was in a cult, it's wild knowing how religious trauma and childhood trauma can affect our adult lives. I'm glad that Tia got out of the cult and started going through therapy to heal. Overall, this memoir is a 10/10, and I highly recommend everyone to read it.

Wow! In her quest to serve God and be a good, proper Christian, Tia Levings lived a life of abuse, servitude, denial and repression. And according to her account, there are still many women living in similar situations. She is a natural people pleaser and as a result, put most people's wants and needs ahead of herself. This book was shocking, jaw-dropping, scary, sad, angering, but also had moments of happiness, healing and relief. Levings writes her story well, and her talent to communicate through writing allowed her to become stronger and gain some freedom to explore and dream. Thank goodness! I wish her luck with her continued journey to overcome and recover from her past trauma. Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the digital ARC.

A Well Trained Wife is a book about survival, & finding a way to keep going even when you don’t have the strength to.

We’ve probably all been exposed to some form of “fundamental” Christianity. Whether it be the Duggar’s 😬 or watching American news. 🫣 They seemed like a more “extreme” form of Christianity to me. A little odd, a tad too political, but family driven & they loved the same Jesus I was raised to love. Didn’t they?
As an adult I see it very differently. Oppressive, controlling, highly patriarchal, unforgiving, judgmental, arrogant, unkind and white. This is what Tia lived, but also with an abusive husband and living a life in fear.

Please check for trigger warnings because there are many.
At one point she had to call her husband “lord” & got spankings. (Yes you read that correctly) She was constantly compared to & judged by “better” wives that knew their place. She was lonely. Had little support and felt trapped. She also had 5 children, one she buried.

What’s sad is I don’t think her story is unique.

This was a quick read. There were times I couldn’t keep people, places & timelines straight but overall a good book.

A Well Trained Wife came out on August 6, 2024. Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press for my eARC.

I first found Tia Levings on TikTok and found the way she delivered information about Christian fundamentalism really compelling. Hearing her story in glimpses was one thing, but reading it all laid out in this memoir was heartbreaking. One aspect I thought she really showed was how the more “normal” version of Christianity she was taught growing up at First Baptist set her up for the extremism she’d soon be faced with. This book literally couldn’t come at a better time, with the vision the far right is trying to impose.

This is such a riveting memoir of Tia Leving's life inside an abusive marriage in a religious context. As she recounts her years of living in a traumatic marriage, we too are drawn into feeling her anxiety, confusion, frustration, sadness, and anger through the stories she shares.

Tia writes that she learned to follow the rules from an early age. The rules were promised to keep her safe. But when her boyfriend—and soon-to-be husband Allan—justified his temper and abuse by these very same rules, Tia was given this advice by a friend, “Tia. You asked God to bring you someone, and He did. And now your faith is being tested. Did you think God wouldn’t be faithful?”

“I knew I needed more help—books and Bible verses weren’t enough to prevent dents beneath the wallpaper when Allan slammed my head.”

Still she surrendered her will. She gave in again and again to her husband’s rigid demand for control.

Until finally it happened: “Truth came in a sequence. My children would not survive here. There wasn’t a savior coming. It was up to me to save us. I pushed my hands flat to the floor and rose to make a plan.”

She tells of the harrowing night she finally did leave with her four children. And of the days and months afterward, filled with pain and heartache. But also filled with healing.

Her story is complex and nuanced. Yet she is a survivor. I highly recommend this book.

My thanks to Net Galley for the review copy.

4.5 stars. The author of this memoir, Tia Levings, was one of the interviewees in the documentary “Shiny Happy People.” In this, she documents her experiences early in life in the grip of a fundamentalist, evangelical church and how those early experiences led her to a young abusive marriage with a man whose mental illness was hidden by his obsessive involvement in different fundamentalist belief systems. It is about her struggles and her escape and her slow recovery. As more fundamentalist attempt to invade our political systems and public institutions, this is an important account of how troubling it all really is. I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

This is going to be a shorter review than usual because I was so engrossed in this book that I completely forgot to keep track of any notes or quotes. I read this book last month, but it is one that will sit with me for a while, I think.

Tia's story is one of irrefutable strength. With the backdrop of Christian patriarchy and domestic violence, it is a story of courage, of the tenacity to live, and not just live, but flourish. It is a story of survival, escape, and new beginnings.

What Tia was able to capture so, so vividly in her writing was how it feels to lose yourself over and over again to a violent theology and way of life hailed as "the way God intended." The self-silencing of intuition in exchange for self-preservation. The insidiousness of Christian patriarchy that doesn't always need to be preached from a pulpit because, within those environments, women learn the patriarchy from the surveillance of other women in the name of "mentoring" and "accountability."

And then, the fierceness of a mother's instinct to protect her young. The undeniable will to live when faced with death.

This story is raw, graphic, and riveting. I had to put it down a few times because the storytelling was so immersive. Whether you have a similar story or are simply curious about life within fundamentalist Christian patriarchal systems, this book is sure to be unforgettable.

Content warnings: graphic descriptions of domestic and sexual abuse; mental and emotional abuse; child abuse; religious abuse; child death.