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A Well-Trained Wife
- My Escape from Christian Patriarchy
- Narrated by: Tia Levings
- Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins
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Publisher's Summary
This gripping audiobook is a strong choice alongside books about high-demand religion, overcoming odds, and finding inner strength in impossible situations."—Booklist (Starred Review)
This program is read by the author.
“Today it hit me when he hit me, blood shaking in my brain. Maybe there wasn’t a savior coming. Maybe it was up to me to save me.”
Recruited into the fundamentalist Quiverfull movement as a young wife, Tia Levings learned that being a good Christian meant following a list of additional life principles—a series of secret, special rules to obey. Being a godly and submissive wife in Christian Patriarchy included strict discipline, isolation, and an alternative lifestyle that appeared wholesome to outsiders. Women were to be silent, “keepers of the home.”
Tia knew that to their neighbors her family was strange, but she also couldn't risk exposing their secret lifestyle to police, doctors, teachers, or anyone outside of their church. Christians were called in scripture to be “in the world, not of it.” So, she hid in plain sight as years of abuse and pain followed. When Tia realized she was the only one who could protect her children from becoming the next generation of patriarchal men and submissive women, she began to resist and question how they lived. But in the patriarchy, a woman with opinions is in danger, and eventually, Tia faced an urgent and extreme choice: stay and face dire consequences, or flee with her children.
Told in a beautiful, honest, and sometimes harrowing voice, A Well-Trained Wife is an unforgettable and timely memoir about a woman's race to save herself and her family and details the ways that extreme views can manifest in a marriage.
A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.
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What the critics say
“In this brave memoir on domestic violence within Christian patriarchy, Tia Levings vulnerably shares her story of survival. With devastating detail, she reveals the many shades of abuse that happen within the world of evangelicalism, a world that was supposed to protect her. The many women who have walked this path from oppression to freedom will find solidarity in these pages.”—Cait West, author of Rift
"I've never given a book a standing ovation until this one. A Well-Trained Wife is a prayer, for all of us. The world is lucky Tia Levings found her freedom and her voice. A reckoning for those who sanction abuse in the name of salvation."—Ashleigh Renard, author of Swing
"With unflinching honesty and relentless self-reflection, Levings’ debut memoir is a portrait in courage."—Julie Bogart, author of The Brave Learner and Raising Critical Thinkers
Editorial Review
What listeners say about A Well-Trained Wife
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Dawn Dancing Otter
- 2024-09-18
I wish this was at all fictional
(Spoiler alert, some components of the story are in my review)
Tia’s story is told with such authenticity, she tells the story of so many women who have lived under this Christian version of Shari'a law.
The doctrinal gaslighting and circular logic embolden violent men and gag and hogtie women, mothers, and daughters.
(I am one of these daughters. I got away before I married into the cycle of abuse. I was effectively excommunicated. Years later, when my mum reached out, I saw all of my sisters married men like this. It’s too much for me to witness. )
I grieved along with Tia’s story of sexual, emotional, and physical abuse from a man who looked for community to validate his drive for violence. When things started to get healthy, and there appeared to be a kind of tolerable peace in their home, he would uproot, isolate, disrupt, drink, terrorize.
My heart completely broke hearing about how he demanded she leave her desperately ill newborn in the hospital to attend church, only to throw her out of the car on the way back…on Mother’s Day, within hours of birthing her baby, and just before that baby would die.
I grieved for and with her, listening to her story of her son being forced by her husband to kill dogs while she recovered from exhaustion and cardiac distress…this was definitely the moment she seemed to awaken to the horror of it all.
I feel proud that she is restoring her life, her children’s lives, beyond that madness.
This is an important story for North Americans to read.
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- Beth Granger
- 2024-08-13
Thank You Brave Tia!
As a religious cult survivor who has been devouring memoirs for years, I thought I had read it all. But I was wrong. Tia’s experiences, while often eerily similar to my own abuses, were sometimes shockingly eye opening, even to me. Her writing (and narration) is excellent, and often had me wiping away tears. I applaud Tia for her tireless efforts to expose the long-term damage of religious abuse, the dangers of Christian Nationalism and the political agenda of the far right. Her memoir is an important cautionary tale that will open readers' eyes to the danger of spiritual abuse.
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- Amazon Customer
- 2024-09-26
Wow.
I needed to hear this, now, at this moment in my life. It's so uncomfortably vivid and haunting, but unlike a lot of memoirs in this style I'm grateful that she chose to keep writing and share with us her "after", rather than just ending with escape.
It gives me hope that I can do hard things.
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- L.E.
- 2024-08-08
Riveting
A Well-Trained Wife held me spellbound for the day and a half it took me to devour it. It is a horrifying look at where fundamentalism can take you and its harmful effects on men, women, and children. No one escapes the consequences and brokenness and devastation that are frequently left in its wake. Tia speaks validation to the many women who have lived this life. And she speaks hope to those who are picking up the shattered pieces of their lives, trying to figure out what went wrong and where.
I'm grateful for her courage in writing this book. It helps me find words for my own experiences and shows me I'm not alone, I wasn't crazy, I wasn't making it up. The harm is real. But the damage that feels unrepairable? Tia's story shows hope and healing ARE possible.
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- Aurora
- 2024-08-29
A difficult but extraordinary listen
I made a joke to my friend when I downloaded this book, sending her a screen shot of the title page and saying ‘guess what I’ll be doing for the next 10 hours straight!’
It turned out that it wasn’t a joke. I genuinely couldn’t do anything else until this was finished.
It was beautiful, compelling, difficult and inspiring. I can’t recommend it enough.
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- Kim Stevens
- 2024-08-12
Highest recommendation
Hard to describe how I feel- this was the best book I’ve ever listened to. Her writing is like poetry, and her narration… so personal and oddly calming. The story left me crying at times, and feeling her triumph at others. Highly recommend
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- Kindle Customer
- 2024-08-11
Amazing story about finding your voice despite trauma
I’ve been following Tia for a few years now and knew part of the story in snippets but not the whole thing told so beautifully. Thank you, Tia, so much for sharing and saying the quiet parts out loud. You provide so much strength and power.
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- Inga
- 2024-08-30
Couldn’t stop listening
A harrowing, page turning, cautionary tale. I couldn’t stop listening. As a former evangelical who was a step or two removed from the culture Tia was part of, I couldn’t believe the similarities in the teachings she had and the books she was reading as a young woman to what I was taught….had my family been more like hers instead of a (small) bit bent to the feminist this could have been me. I’ve been recommending this to everyone.
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- Meagan
- 2024-09-02
Thank you
I read this in one day and it was gracious and good and eye opening. I cried, I laughed, I audibly gasped and scared my cat. It would make a great movie if it all wasn’t real.
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