My life in an end-times sect with a guitar, books as my only possessions

Growing up in an end-times religious community, Shawna Kay Rodenberg renounced her earthly possessions and spoke in tongues. She was whipped for the smallest infraction, such as using a marker to underline passages in her Bible. 

And yet, “there was a camaraderie there,” Rodenberg said. “We all were trying to navigate growing up and balancing being good with being free.” She details her life in her memoir “Kin” (Bloomsbury), out now, starting in Seco, Ky., the Appalachian region where her family dates back 300 years. Rodenberg’s mother, Debbie, watched as the coal mines destroyed her father and older brother Jesse, who would get so violent that she sometimes had to lock him in a cage overnight so he wouldn’t kill her.