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.