Lisa Pulitzer

New York Times Bestselling Author

Selected Works

Non-fiction
Portrait of a Monster
Joran van der Sloot, A Murder in Peru, and the Natalee Holloway Mystery
Nonfiction
Stolen Innocence, My Story of Growing up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs
More than a tale of survival and freedom, Stolen Innocence is the story of one heroic woman who stood up for what was right and reclaimed her life.
The Daughters of Juárez, A True Story of Serial Murder South of the Border
"Here's the deal: you are murdered and your death is not counted,you are murdered and your death is not investigated, you are murdered and someone is framed for your death. This is Juárez, the jewel of our free trade theories. This is a book everyone should read. And then wonder about the United States and Mexico and this hell of dead women they paper over with lies."
–Charles Bowden, award-winning author of Down by the River
Murder in Paradise
On January 15, 2000, the bruised body of thirty-four-year-old Lois McMillan, a Connecticut artist vacationing in the British Virgin Islands, was discovered draped across the rocks of an inlet where she had apparently drowned in the Caribbean waves. Local authorities on the little paradise of Tortola quickly confirmed that it was no accident.

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Stolen Innocence, My Story of Growing up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs

"Wall’s story couldn’t be more timely. Her descriptions of the polygamous sect’s rigidity are shocking, but what’s most fascinating is the immensely likeable author’s struggle to reconcile her longing for happiness with her terror of it’s consequences."
–People

In this courageous memoir, written with Lisa Pulitzer, Elissa Wall tells the incredible and inspirational story of how she emerged from the confines of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) and helped bring one of America's most notorious criminals to justice. Offering a child's perspective on life in the FLDS, Wall discusses her tumultuous youth, explaining how her family's turbulent past intersected with her strong will and identified her as a girl who needed to be controlled through marriage. Detailing how Warren Jeffs's influence over the church twisted its already rigid beliefs in dangerous new directions, Wall portrays the inescapable mind-set and unrelenting pressure that forced her to wed despite her repeated protests that she was too young.

Once she was married, Wall's childhood shattered as she was obligated to follow Jeffs's directives and submit to her husband in "mind, body, and soul." With little money and no knowledge of the outside world, she was trapped and forced to endure the pain and abuse of her loveless relationship, which eventually pushed her to spend nights sleeping in her truck rather than face the tormentor in her bed.

Yet even in those bleak times, she retained a sliver of hope that one day she would find a way out, and one snowy night that came in the form of a rugged stranger named Lamont Barlow. Their chance encounter set in motion a friendship and eventual romance that gave her the strength she needed to break free from her past and sever the chains of the church.

But though she was out of the FLDS, Wall would still have to face Jeffs—this time in court. In Stolen Innocence, she delves into the difficult months on the outside that led her to come forward against him, working with prosecutors on one of the biggest criminal cases in Utah's history, so that other girls still inside the church might be spared her cruel fate.