In 1981, at the age of 20, i walked away from a religious cult with $2 and a bag of clothes slung over my shoulder. At a highway merge, I stuck out my thumb. If Satan would have offered me a lift I would have hopped in. I was too beaten to care. This is the story of how I escaped a cult’s grip and reclaimed my life.
After the Cult is available for purchase at the following locations.
Dave Patteson’s journey from cult -convert to self-reflective everyman is rendered so personally and so bravely on these pages, that reading it invites us to consider our own uneven pathways through life just as he does — our struggles, our flaws, and our triumphs.
Ward Howarth
Author of River City BluesAfter the Cult picks up in the days following David’s courageous decision to leave the Church of Bible Understanding — portrayed in his previous graphic memoir, The Cult. Using the same simplistic but gorgeously raw drawing style used in The Cult, David illustrates the telling of his traumatic new beginning where he’s confused on how to redeem his broken spirit, and his muddled mind leads him to believe that salvation may rest within the arms of the abuser. After the Cult is a hold-your-breath page-turner that has the reader wondering, along with David, if how one defines the word perfect may hold the key to inner peace.
Hope Whitby
Author of Traveling the RiverDavid Patteson’s, After the Cult, continues the heartfelt story of a young person’s search for meaning and purpose after being derailed by a cult’s insidious guilt tripping, “emotional air-raids,” and dogma. After the Cult finds David physically free but learning that the strongest trammels are those which bind our hearts and our primal selves.—,