Forager cover art

Forager

Field Notes for Surviving a Family Cult: A Memoir

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Forager

By: Michelle Dowd
Narrated by: Michelle Dowd
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About this listen

 A moving, heartbreaking, and lyrical true story of the author’s escape from an apocalyptic cult—and the survival skills that led to her freedom.

My family prepared me for the end of the world, but I know how to survive on what the earth yields.

As a child, Michelle Dowd grew up on a mountain in the Angeles National Forest. She was born into an ultra-religious cult—or the Field as they called it—started in the 1930s by her grandfather, a mercurial, domineering, and charismatic man who convinced generations of young male followers that he would live 500 years and ascend to the heavens when doomsday came. Comfort and care are sins, Michelle is told. As a result, she was forced to learn the skills necessary to battle hunger, thirst, and cold; she learned to trust animals more than humans; and most importantly, she learned how to survive in the natural world.

At the Field, a young Michelle lives a life of abuse, poverty, and isolation, as she obeys her family’s rigorous religious and patriarchal rules—which are so extreme that Michelle is convinced her mother would sacrifice her, like Abraham and Isaac, if instructed by God. She often wears the same clothes for months at a time; she is often ill and always hungry for both love and food. She is taught not to trust Outsiders, and especially not Quitters, nor her own body and its warnings.

But as Michelle gets older, she realizes she has the strength to break free. Focus on what will sustain, not satiate you, she tells herself. Use everything. Waste nothing. Get to know the intricacies of the land, like the intricacies of your body. And so she does.

Using stories of individual edible plants and their uses to anchor each chapter, Forager is both a searing coming-of-age story and a meditation on the ways in which understanding nature can lead to freedom, even joy.
 Adventurers, Explorers & Survival Survival Memoir

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All stars
Most relevant
What an interesting story of growing up in a cult, tied with conflict and wisdom. Would love to learn more about the life after and how it was to navigate the unknown life of the "outside". It's a nice touch to also learn about plants while listening to an intriguing storyline.

Compelling!

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Opening the doors to a world vastly different from the one most people grow up in, Michelle Dowd gives an interesting and open-hearted account about what it was like to grow up in a Christian cult. A very interesting window into this world told brilliantly by the author herself. I highly recommend this book!

Personal and touching account

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