Exclusive Legacy

In this first instalment of her trilogical memoir, Kate describes the reality of growing up in the Exclusive Brethren Church, a strictly controlled, legalistic sect. The year of her birth, the sect’s universal leader decrees separation from the world, triggering a slow descent into cult territory that radically alters the lives of its members.

Throughout her school years, Kate increasingly realises that she is different from her classmates, having to be excluded from many of life’s activities.

As a naïve teen, she is pressured into marrying a boy she barely knows, whilst separated from her parents under bizarre circumstances. With the move to a new town, an increasingly rocky marriage, a growing family, and the church’s forbidding environment overshadowing every aspect of her life, Kate struggles to stay afloat. Music is her one consolation.

In her mid-twenties, after falling foul of the local church, she and her husband are excommunicated several times. When it all becomes too much for him, he abandons her, and she must learn how to live independently whilst raising five children. Her life from this point can be read in book two.