Life for Irene Spencer was a series of devastating disappointments and hardships. Irene’s first book, Shattered Dreams, is the staggering chronicle of her struggle to provide for her children in abject poverty and feelings of abandonment each time her husband left to be with one of his other wives. Irene was raised to believe that polygamy was the way of life necessary for her ticket to heaven. The hard knocks of her environment were just the beginning of Irene’s shocking tale.
In Cult Insanity, Spencer reveals the outrageous behavior of her brother-in-law Ervil-a self-proclaimed prophet who determined he was called to set the house of God in order-and how he terrorized their colony. Claiming to be God’s avenger and to have a license to kill in the name of God, Ervil ordered the murders of friends and family members, eliminating all those who challenged his authority. Cult Insanity is a riveting, terrifying memoir of polygamist life under the tyranny of a madman.

Irene Spencer did as she felt God commanded in marrying her brother-in-law Verlan LeBaron, becoming his second wife. When the government raided the fundamentalist, polygamous Mormon village of Short Creek, Arizona, Irene and her family fled to Verlan’s brothers’ Mexican ranch. They lived in squalor and desolate conditions in the Mexican desert with Verlan’s six brothers, one sister, and numerous wives and children. Listeners will be appalled and astonished but, most amazingly, greatly inspired. Irene’s dramatic story reveals how far religion can be stretched and abused and how one woman and her children found their way out, into truth and redemption.