A heart-wrenching multigenerational family memoir by an excommunicated member of the Exclusive Brethren

After coming out as gay as a teenager, Craig Hoyle was excommunicated from the New Zealand Exclusive Brethren. The conservative sect was everything he’d ever known – a childhood where television, pop music, sports and even pets were against the rules. Cast out for wickedness, Craig said goodbye to his family forever.

Joining public society – the ‘worldlies’ – for the first time, Craig sets out to meet his grandfather who was excommunicated in the 1980s without the chance to say goodbye to his children. Using his grandfather’s records, diaries and letters, Craig uncovers two centuries and seven generations of the family’s cruel and tangled relationship with the Brethren, and discovers that he is not as much of a black sheep as he had been made to think.

Weaving the family’s past with Craig’s own upbringing and rebellion in one of New Zealand’s most secretive and oppressive religious sects, this book charts the story of the Exclusive Brethren in New Zealand and the heart-wrenching lives of a family torn apart by it.

Author Biography

Craig Hoyle grew up in Invercargill within the New Zealand Exclusive Brethren. Separated from public society, he attended Brethren-only schooling and worked in his family’s tyre shop. After facing interrogations and conversion therapy for his sexuality, he was excommunicated from the Brethren and lost his family in 2009. Today he is a news director for the Sunday Star-Times. He has worked for newsrooms such as TV3 and RadioLive, and behind the scenes on current affairs shows including 60 Minutes and 3rd Degree. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.

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