Praise for the Book

Hideaways fascinates, spellbinds, and completely pleases any person’s soul willing to take the journey. A bright, shining example of superb creative nonfiction and provocative story telling. --Tom Daly, Chico

There are so many stories in Hideaways I really got a kick out of. So many different people will enjoy this book on many different levels. --Interview with Nancy Weigman, Nancy’s Bookshelf, NPR

With compassion and deeply felt emotion, Allred takes the reader into the daily life and painful separations, an inseparable part of his own journey. ---Dan Barnett, feature writer, Chico Enterprise-Record

Hideaways unfolds from many perspectives .

Stories appear in my own voice as a boy, a young man, and adult. Also sharing the telling is my father, Dr. Rulon Clark Allred, my birth mother Mabel Finlayson Allred , her identical twin and sister-wife, five other plural wives--also my mothers-- and some of my 47 full and half brothers and sisters.

These stories explore identities, faith, pain, and love—the complicated family ties that shape and bind us. Unveiled are the secret spaces—physical, emotional, and spiritual—that help define my fundamentalist family upbringing. ---Jerry