About this item
For the first thirteen years of her life, Flor Edwards grew up in the Children of God. The group's nomadic existence was based on the belief that, as God's chosen people, they would be saved in the impending apocalypse that would envelop the rest of the world in 1993. Flor would be thirteen years old. The group's charismatic leader, Father David, kept the family on the move, from Los Angeles to Bangkok to Chicago, where they would eventually disband, leaving Flor to make sense of the foreign world of mainstream society around her. Apocalypse Child is a cathartic journey through Flor's memories of growing up within a group with unconventional views on education, religion, and sex. Whimsically referring to herself as a real life Kimmy Schmidt, Edwards's clear-eyed memoir is a story of survival in a childhood lived on the fringes.
About the Author
Flor Edwards is an author and lives in Los Angeles, California. By age twelve, Flor had lived in 24 different locations across three continents. Always on the move to escape the Antichrist and in preparation for the Apocalypse in 1993, her nomadic childhood prompted her to pen her forthcoming memoir Apocalypse Child. In her debut memoir, Flor movingly describes her early life growing up with her family and 11 siblings as a member of The Children of God, a controversial religious movement that many describe as an apocalyptic cult. Apocalypse Child is about a girl (me) who grows up in an apocalyptic cult in Southeast Asia. She lives under the control of a dictator-like leader who controls his twelve thousand followers from his top-secret hiding place. Flor never sees the leader and grows up never knowing that she will live to see adulthood. Instead, her future is painted with the promise of a lush heaven precluded by a torturous death since she is one of God's chosen children who will save the world before the Great Apocalypse when she will be twelve years old. Despite the terror Flor faces, she manages to see beauty around her, but her life is once again jolted when the leader dies and Flor is thrust into the throes of mainstream society and left to make sense of it all. In 2011, Flor graduated with a BA in Print Journalism. Then she earned her MFA in Creative Writing. She has taught writing at UC Riverside and Santa Monica College. Her debut memoir Apocalypse Child is set for release by Turner Publishing Company on March 13, 2018.
