The Book of Mormon Girl: A Memoir of an American Faith

Written by: Joanna Brooks

First line: On Monday nights, my father and mother gathered their four children around the kitchen table in our tract house on the edge of the orange groves and taught us how the universe worked.

Why you should read this book: Raised by devout parents among a loving faith community, Brooks is proud of her heritage and content with her place in the universe, until she goes to college and develops a feminist conscience. In modern Mormonism, she learns as a young adult, feminism, is considered anathema, and those who espouse it deserve excommunication. Brooks does not leave her faith, but she refuses to compromise her own beliefs, marrying a man of another religion, campaigning on behalf of marriage equality, and researching church history to find evidence that racism and sexism were not tenets of the early Mormon pioneers.

Why you should read this book: You would never question anything your religious leader said.