Pauline Dakin

This is one of the most bizarre stories that I have ever read. From the time she was a young child, until she was in her twenties, Dakin's life, and that of her brother, was disrupted, full of secrets, and odd goings on. On of the hardest things was leaving a town where they were settled and happy, living in a beautiful house that they had renovated, and having to move, without a word of goodbye to their friends, ending up in worse circumstances. Their mother did everything she could to keep them away from her father. Oddly, they were often accompanied by a highly regarded minister, Stan Sears, and his wife Sybil.

The book opens when Dakin goes to meet her mother, and to her surprise, Stan Sears at a motel. Her mother and Stan explain that they have all been targeted by organized crime, including Dakin's father, and simultaneously protected by a secret police unit tasked with fighting the criminals. The sudden moves were to flee when the criminals found them. Dakin must have been wondering if she wasn't better off before learning the "truth."

Dakin then goes back and traces her childhood -- her father's drinking, her parents' divorce, and the recommendation that Ruth Dakin meet with Stan Sears for counseling. The Sears, Ruth Dakin, and her children would go for "camping trips" from which they never returned, leaving friends, relatives, and possessions behind. The children hated it, but the two people they trusted most were insisting that this was the truth. Things only get odder with family members supposedly being replaced by doubles, letters from the police in the secret unit, shots fired at Stan, drugs an dart guns, poisoned rugs.

Finally, Pauline, her brother, and their spouses begin to doubt the story. Pauline confronts Stan, her mother, and Stan's wife, but they are adamant that the story is true. Perhaps they cannot bear to believe that all these things have happened to them because they were taken in. At one point, Pauline's mother remarks that if Pauline doesn't believe the story, she must hate her mother for the life they've led.

I thought the story dragged towards the end, but perhaps the normal details of the end of life seemed washed out by the craziness that preceded them.

Pauline finally finds Alistair Munro, the foremost expert on delusional disorders, which seem like a plausible explanation. He explains that many delusional people believe in things that seem unlikely, but possible, and they want to recruit other believers. At the same time, outside of their delusions, they often seem to be normal and well-functioning.

What I found hardest to square with this is the massive amount of deceit and manipulation that Stan, who had been generally considered to be a very honest person, carried out to make his stories seem plausible. That seems like cognitive dissonance on an incredible scale. I suppose that the more he invested in the story, the less he could bear to give it up. He and Ruth fell in love, which may have been the reason that he pulled her into the story, and convinced her that her husband was a gangster. He callously promised things that he knew would never happen. He may have been suffering from a delusion, but it seems to me that he also lacked a basic sense of morality. His use of the death of his son, Michael, to deflect Ruth whenever she got suspicious, seems to indicate that he was still pretty crafty.… (mere)

I found it to be very slow-paced and difficult to get into. Also, the choice was made not to be upfront about some important issues and instead have things unfold for the reader in the same way as the author had them unfold, at least in certain parts of the book. Sometimes that works, but I don't think that it does in this instance. The reader comes to understand something before the author came to understand it due to the fact that the author was raised to believe certain things that the reader was not. Once I realized an important plot point, I was only interested in reading about when the truth comes out, and I ended up skipping a few chapters to get to that part. I hate to do that, but it wasn't holding my interest enough to continue and I didn't want to put the book down altogether. I wanted to understand why things happened the way that they did. This story needed to be told and I'm glad that the author wrote this book. I think that her story will help others.… (mere)

I enjoyed this memoir very much. The story is incredible, and shows how someone's mental illness can affect so many lives! In this story, Pauline and her younger brother, Ted, are often pulled from school or moved to another city with their Mother (Ruth)...usually following family friend, Stan Sears and his wife, Sybil. Ruth is obsessed with secrecy, constantly warning her children never to tell anyone anything about their lives. Why? What is going on?

We find out as the story unfolds. The story of the delusions suffered by Stan, and how he has managed to convince Ruth of their truth, provides an insider perspective of how mental illness can affect the lives of children. Both Pauline and Ted had challenges in their marriages, and in connecting to their father. How Pauline, in particular, came to terms with Stan's impact on the family is the most interesting aspect of the book because of her honest portrayal of her feelings.… (mere)