From the Author of the Award-Winning Memoir, Not the Mother I Remember — an extraordinary story of love and faith and a unique window into the world of the 1970s Jesus Movement.

In 1973, Linda was a flute player and music major at a California community college, until she met and fell madly in love with a charismatic piano player, plunging into his world of music-making and drug-fueled parties. When, just three weeks after their wedding, he reveals that he’s been “born again,” Linda makes the decision to follow him into his new religion and, unwittingly, into a life of communal living, male domination, and magical thinking.  

With unflinching candor, Amber Starfire chronicles her journey as Linda Carr into the evangelical culture, where she gives up everything for her husband and their music ministry. But in the process, she loses her most valuable assets: her identity and sense of self-worth. It is only when Linda returns to live with her birth family and faces her complicated relationship with her mother that she finds new purpose and the courage to begin extricating herself from the limiting beliefs of her past.