Escaping the Smoke and Rain: Moving Through and Beyond the Jehovah's Witness Community

Breaking free from the Jehovah’s Witness community would be the test that would become my testimony. There I was climbing the ice-clad rungs of a rickety old ladder, anchored in a bed of snow, hanging Christmas lights for the very first time. I was convinced no other symbol would illumine my debut as brightly or as swiftly as this. It felt exhilarating yet terrifying all at once-like standing on the edge of a precipice fearing that stepping off would either plunge me into death, or somehow, someway, teach me to fly.
So begins the author’s personal journey from enslavement to freedom- one that tragically captures the loss and rediscovery of identity.

Shauna May provides a revelatory look into the life of a religiously divided family-her mother a fiercely zealous Jehovah’s Witness, and her father a geophysicist and selfprofessed atheist. As the family journeys through bizarre reversals of fortune, we are taken to the rugged west coast of Ireland and back to Canada, gazing all the while into the raw existence of a childhood spiraling from riches to rags. Her father’s death propels May into a luminous quest for truth and freedom, a quest with a price attached: to break out of the Order, she must break the ties that bind.

May enlightens the process of learning, unlearning, and relearning certain basic truths while engaging in the struggle involved in walking from and into life anew. Positively written, Escaping the Smoke and Rain is an unforgettable testimony of the transformative power of spirituality.

A portion of proceeds from this book will be donated to Free the Children.