Review: Memoir ‘The Dirt Beneath Our Door’ takes author from tragedy to Minneapolis

Once she turned 13, author Pamela Jones’ marriage clock began ticking, as the Twin Cities resident writes in “The Dirt Beneath Our Door”: “I was expected to become a wife in the next few years and fulfill my mission to produce as many children as possible for my husband’s posterity.”

Jones was born into the Church of the First Born of the Fullness of Time a polygamous sect based in Chihuahua, Mexico. Known as Rina, she was the 11th of her father’s 62 children, by the third of his 11 wives.

At first glance, that may sound as though it has the makings of a Monty Python skit. But there’s nothing funny here. Once past my disbelief, “Dirt” left feelings of sadness, anger and pity.

Jones’ mother, also Pamela, was a loving, caring mom trapped in an endless cycle of poverty, pregnancy and abuse. She worked two server jobs and brought home cardboard boxes filled with half-eaten pizza that customers left behind, so her children would have something to eat.

“The little food we had was constantly infested with vermin,” Jones writes. “It was all part of the cult’s grand plan, keeping the sister wives not only perpetually pregnant but also near destitute, hungry, and humiliated, destroying their spirit and quashing any dreams of escape.”

There was physical abuse, as well. Jones’ older brother, Jerold, was totally deaf in one ear and half deaf in the other because their father, Ossmen, held Jerold’s “nose and mouth closed to punish him for crying.” While fighting for breath, the boy punctured his eardrums.

Rina suffered also: “Daddy had whipped me many times, slapped my face, beat me with a clothesline and with wire, but he’d never hit me with a wooden rake handle.” Until he did that, too.

What kept the author there? I suspect Stockholm syndrome. One evening she learns someone died, so she prays, “Oh Heavenly Father, please let my daddy be okay. I don’t care how much he beats me; I just want to see my daddy again.”

Ultimately, after much planning, Rina and her nine children manage to escape. They make it across the border to the U.S., eventually to Minnesota, and she starts a new life. It isn’t all smooth sailing. But she starts a successful business and finds happiness. And peace.

“The Dirt Beneath Our Door” joins a subgenre of books written by women who escaped cults or fundamentalists. So Jones is not alone. Hopefully, her success and news of the book get back to church members who might follow her example — or to Mexican authorities who can shut it all down.

A final note: The Mormon Church is unaffiliated with this offshoot and, in fact, banned polygamy more than a century ago.

Curt Schleier is a critic in New Jersey.

By: Pamela Jones and Elizabeth Ridley.