Whitcoulls Recommends: Dream State and Unveiled

Dream State by Eric Puchner. This book starts with the lead up to a wedding, after which the bride makes a momentous decision which then ripples through the lives of her husband, his best friend and the future generations. It’s a story about the consequences of the decisions we make, and the subsequent joy, regret and pain which can linger for a lifetime and which help turn us into the people we become, for better or for worse. This is wonderful storytelling. 

Unveiled by Theophila Pratt. The author was born into the Gloriavale community, with the given name Honey Faithful. She was one of nine siblings and knew from the age of 14 that she wanted more from life – which eventually included being able to change her name. At the age of 18 she refused to sign the Gloriavale Declaration of Commitment and was subsequently evicted. Life in that community has been well documented in other places, but Theophila’s story is a timely (and fascinating) reminder of the cult that still exists on the West Coast, and which now has an outpost in India of which her sister was a founding member. This is also the story of a courageous young woman finding her own voice. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talk SEDB.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Time to talk books now, and I'm joined by Joe McKenzie.
Good morning.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Hello.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
I am very excited about the first book that you
have in your hands. This is sitting at my bedside
and I cannot wait to tear into it. It's called
Dream State by Eric Pushner.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Yes, it is kind of I guess I could describe
it as a bit of a literary romance. It's the
story of a young woman called Cec who's about to
get married and she heads from California down to the
state of Montana, where her fiancees family have a holiday
home and she wants to get married there because that house,
for her, represents everything that she wants in life. So

(00:50):
even though all the guest is going to have to
travel some distance, that's where she wants to have the wedding.
And she goes down a week early to get ready,
and Charlie, the fiance, sends his friend around to make
sure that she's got everything that she needs and just
to look out for her and help with anything that
she might need done. His name's Garrett and he's a
bit of an environmental, hippy kind of guy who doesn't

(01:12):
believe in marriage, and he's got very different values and
life expectations to what Ceci and her fiance have. But
they get married, and very soon after the marriage, she
decides that Charlie is not the man for her and
she leaves her new husband and she runs away with Garrett.
And the novel then takes place over the next fifty

(01:33):
years with the next generation and the family and how
the decisions that you make and the way that you
choose to live your life can reverberate for years and
years and years through the family and the impacts that
it can have.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Quite intrigued as to what those impacts are, well, you
know if you can't tell to Okay, it's very good.

Speaker 3 (01:54):
And I will say, not only do I love it,
but Oprah has picked it up as her latest book
club choice. So there's a recommendation.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
There is a recommendation, and everybody will have heard of
it very soon when we about a story of surviving
Gloria Vale Unveiled.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
Unveiled is by a young woman who was born into
Gloria Vale and was named Honey Faithful, with the kinds
of names that people in Gloria Vale are given. She
during her early years, and when she was about fourteen,
realized that she did not want to live this way anymore.
She believed that there was another way of being in
the world, and at the age of eighteen, when Gloria

(02:32):
Vale asked her to sign what they call the commitment
to the Community, which is a two thousand word document
which spells out exactly how you need to live within
that community, she refused to sign it, at which point
they essentially evicted her. So at the age of eighteen,
she left with I think two hundred dollars and a
suitcase and was dropped at the bus stop in Graymouth

(02:54):
and left off fend for herself. She didn't even know.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
What a bus stop was.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
She had nobody in the outside world, really, except that
her mother had had a very good friend from her
own younger days and had retained the business card of
this friend. And this young woman, Honey Faithful, who changed
her name to Theophila Pratt, which is the name under
which he's written this book. She got in touch with

(03:19):
this friend of her mother's, a woman called Keitha who
lived in Auckland, and she got on a plane and
she came to Auckland and she thought Graymouth was quite big,
but she got to Auckland and she had never seen
anything like it, and she's remade her life. But she
has a lot to say about Gloria Vale. And I
will say there have been other books that have been documentaries.
This is not the first time that we've had this information.

(03:42):
But personally, I think it's a really good timely reminder
about exactly what is still going on down in that
community and the impact that it has on so many lives.
It's an extraordinary story. She tells it really, really well.
At the end, she has a listing of something like
sixteen of the men in the community who've been convicted
on charges of interfering with miners, all that kind of

(04:05):
awful stuff. She tells it well, and it's I think
salutary and well worth remembering that this is going.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
On, that incredibly brave story theory. The book was called Unveiled,
and the other book we spoke about was dream State
by Eric Pushner.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks a B from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio,