Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots

In the vein of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel and Carolyn Jessop's Escape, this immediate New York Times bestseller memoir follows a young Jewish woman as she flees a religious cult and includes a brand-new epilogue from the author.

Deborah Feldman was raised under an unyielding set of rules limiting everything from what she may wear to who she could talk to and what she could read. She belonged to the very orthodox Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism. She was able to envisage a different way of living thanks to the stolen moments she had with the strong female literature figures Louisa May Alcott and Jane Austen. The conflict between Deborah's desires and her obligations as a good Satmar girl intensified until she gave birth at the age of nineteen and realised that, for the sake of herself and her son, she had to leave her emotionally and sexually abusive marriage to a man she hardly knew. Deborah was trapped in this marriage as a teenager.