Review: "The Dirt Beneath Our Door" by Pamela Jones

The Dirt Beneath Our Door by Pamela Jones (with Elizabeth Ridley)
Published September 2025 via Matt Holt Books
★★★

When the day ended, I would be one of two things: either dead, or free. Right now, either option sounded good. (loc. 65*)

Jones wasn't supposed to be born into polygamy: Her father, seeing what it did to his own mother, swore that he didn't want that life. But then, well, things changed. And by the time Jones was born—her mother's second child, and her father's eleventh—I think it's fair to say that her father had gone all in on polygamy, decreeing that Jones would be named after a high school girlfriend and eventually taking up with eleven plural wives. And although Jones knew she didn't want to be a second or third (or tenth or eleventh) wife, she saw only the path that was laid in front of her: marry young into polygamy (in Mexico, where her family lived because there was less government scrutiny), have children, have more children, welcome new wives into the relationship.

Sometimes I was asked to babysit church members' kids, only to arrive and find the husband home alone, "just waiting" for his wife and kids to return. Then the flirting started. Even stranger, when the wife and kids arrived home, they joined the campaign to add me to their family as the next plural wife. (loc. 1193)

It sounds like a terribly hard upbringing. Jones didn't know anything different, of course, but she was never able to have what most people would consider a normal childhood—too much cooking and cleaning and childcare; not enough school or friendship or innocence. Dozens of siblings but very little one-on-one time with her father (and too much fear when she did have time with him). And terribly warped expectations for marriage:

"What more do you need?" He pulled away as his voice rose in irritation. "You can cook, sew, clean, and take care of children. What else is there, Rina?" (loc. 1447)

Jones paints a devastating picture of life in a cult. I'm surprised by how little strife she discusses between her father's wives, though honestly it sounds like she (and her mother) had limited contact with a lot of them. Or maybe they were all just too focused on survival for infighting—fear of their own husband, fear of Ervil LeBaron, just simple struggle to get enough food on the table to feed a household with no financial (or other) freedom and almost no financial (...or other...) support.

Most of the book takes place during Jones's upbringing and first marriage. There are some true jaw-droppers in here—I think they're worth reading in the full context and don't want to include spoilers, but I'll just say that her first husband's approach to marriage was...something else. Jones is able to find some compassion for him (he, too, grew up in the cult, and his actions very much reflect that distortion), but it's incredibly telling of how hard their community's demands were on girls and women.

Jones doesn't talk as much about her time after the cult, or about how her relationship with her parents changed as she got older. Her father ultimately helped her out with some things that surprised me, given the context of his chosen religion, and I'd have liked to know more about how that came about and how their relationship evolved as Jones struggled through her first years of freedom. I'd also have liked more about Jones and her kids figuring things out once they were outside the cult, though I'm not sure how much of that story she could reasonably tell while allowing for whatever levels of privacy her kids prefer. (I'd someday love to read a memoir from one of those kids, though, because I expect that their experience of leaving was in some ways even more jarring than Jones's.)

All told, a gripping read. Very much one for those with a preexisting curiosity about culty books, but also a reminder of just how much control a certain subset of people want to exert over others.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.