Megan Phelps-Roper

The author is the granddaughter of Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps, and she grew up in the church (located in Topeka, Kansas), taking part in the organization's inflammatory protests beginning at age five. Despite the extreme belief system with which she was raised, her childhood was relatively normal—she attended public school, her family was a close and loving group of people. However, she embraced the church's beliefs completely, seeing this as a way to gain praise and attention from her parents and other adults. She became her mother Shirley's assistant in church matters and asked to be baptized at age 13 to demonstrate her faith. She recalls, "I knew my classmates saw me as some sort of weird hybrid of a person: a friendly girl who enjoyed helping others with homework on the one hand, but a hateful religious fanatic, who believed everyone was going...