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In Rift, Cait West tells a harrowing story of chaos and control hidden beneath the facade of a happy family. Weaving together lyrical meditations on the geology of the places her family lived with her story of spiritual and emotional manipulation as a stay-at-home daughter, Cait creates a stirring portrait of one young woman’s growing awareness that she is experiencing abuse. With the ground shifting beneath her feet, Cait mustered the courage to break free from all she’d ever known and choose a future of her own making. 
 
Rift is a story of survival. It’s also a story about what happens after you survive. With compassion and clarity, Cait explores the complex legacy of patriarchal religious trauma in her life, including the ways she has also been complicit in systems of oppression. A remarkable literary debut, Rift offers an essential personal perspective on the fraught legacy of purity culture and recent reckonings with abuse in Christian communities.

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 Praise for RIFT

“A powerful meditation on what it means to be trapped and what it takes to break free.”

—Publishers Weekly Starred Review

“In this beautifully crafted memoir, Cait West offers readers an intimate glimpse into growing up and coming of age in a world defined by Christian patriarchy. Written with unusual sensitivity and unflinching honesty, hers is a story of aching loss and gritty resilience, of brokenness, beauty, and hope.” 

—Kristin Kobes Du Mez, New York Times bestselling author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation

“Wow, this book is beautiful. Rift is captivating and compelling, and though her story takes center stage, West’s writing—so graceful and elegant—is what truly shines in this book. In my work as a writer, editor, and professor, I read dozens of books in a year. This story, along with the craft behind it, is one of the best I’ve read in recent memory. I have no doubt that West’s work is sure to make waves.” 

—Kelly Sundberg, PhD, author of Goodbye, Sweet Girl

“Cait West’s Rift vibrates with relevance—particularly for the time in which now we all find ourselves. One in which men are desperately trying to hold on to power and subjugate women’s bodies, movements, and even their internet searches. Rift compels every woman to look at the ways a dying patriarchal culture is trying to separate us from our individual and collective strength. At once full of the details of her life and escape, as well as the nature of cultural and geological tectonic shifts, Rift belongs on a shelf with Terry Tempest Williams and Deborah Feldman.”

—Kate Carroll de Gutes, author of Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

“Cait West has given us a rare gift in Rift: a chance to see behind the curtain of the Christian patriarchy movement’s smiling faces and witness the personal devastation the movement has wrought on so many young people, especially girls. This is a harrowing yet deeply necessary book about a family’s descent into radicalization—and West is a skilled narrator and courageous guide."

—R. L. Stollar, author of The Kingdom of Children

“Beautiful, tragic, hopeful, and real. Rift is a heartbreaking story told with breathtaking words. Cait West gives you a glimpse into her life and reveals how manipulative control can masquerade as Christian love. As I read, I shed tears with her and cheered for her. And when I reached the end, I felt more free having journeyed alongside her.”

—Jenai Auman, writer, artist, and author of Othered

“Rift is a gorgeously written, intimate portrait of a girl raised in Christian patriarchy. This close, inside view shows the reader what it is like to be stuck under male authority and feel oneself vanishing away. The inability to choose in education, romance, and faith, even as an adult woman, leaves a wrenching void. Rift becomes a story of overcoming. Here you'll meet a woman finding herself and the hard, brave steps it takes to break free, to heal a broken space inside.”

—Sarah Stankorb, author of Disobedient Women