Don't Get Yourself Talked About

In 1953, shortly before her 15th birthday, the author and her 20-year-old boyfriend eloped to Arkansas. They hadn't planned on marrying so soon; in fact, she had always hoped to go to college and have a career. But she was pregnant and they were in love, so marriage seemed their only option. But things took an unexpected turn when they found they had to turn around without getting married and come back to her waiting parents, co-pastors of a tiny Assemblies of God church in East St. Louis, Illinois. Pat's mother was a fiercely independent woman who had pastored her own church before marriage and had worked her way through college after the birth of her two children to become an elementary school teacher. She was not about to let her only daughter become a wife and mother at the age of 15. But her decision to terminate her daughter's pregnancy in that era before legal abortion was destined to have dramatic and long-lasting effects on everyone concerned, tearing apart their little church and sending each of the players in this drama off on a different trajectory. The story of how their lives were changed and the revelations that would slowly emerge over the next half century is as engaging as anything in fiction, and the issues addressed continue to challenge American society to this day. The author's parents were traveling evangelists during her early childhood in the 1940s, and the book is full of rich detail about the early days of the Pentecostal movement in the American Midwest. Among the many interesting anecdotes is one involving a decades-long dispute between the author's mother and her mother's old friend, the Rev. Richard Dortch. As president of televangelist Jim Bakker's PTL Club, Dortch was indicted on federal charges and sent to prison in 1988. The man Pat eventually married was a journalist, and the book also contains a fascinating first-person account of the couple's participation in the Civil Rights struggles in East St. Louis, Illinois, during the 1960s as well as a behind-the-scenes look at how newspapers handled controversial issues like the conflict in the Middle East during the 1970s. ''Don't Get Yourself Talked About'' is a story of two strong women, Pat and her mother, and how they dealt with sex, motherhood, marriage, and the social conditions of their times. It is also a slice of American history that shouldn't be missed.