The Devil is Real and Her Name is Ruby Franke
A Review of "The House of My Mother" by Shari Franke
STAR RATING: ☆☆☆☆☆
Spoiler-free Review.
Book trigger warnings: child abuse, grooming, cults, & sexual assault.
I told myself I’d review every book I read, but with this one, I wasn’t sure where to begin. I had to pause the audiobook several times to sit with what I’d just heard from Shari Franke’s shaking voice. Having known about 8 Passengers—the YouTube channel documenting every moment of her and her five siblings’ lives—I knew I was in for an emotional rollercoaster. But the depths of depravity from her mother were soul-crushing.
There’s a lot of backstory involved with this case and it’s become a ‘true crime’ phenomenon of its own, much to the dismay of Shari Franke and the other survivors in her family. For the sake of this review (and to stay in line with my own morals), I’ll just be discussing the quality and contents of the book. If you want to learn more, I suggest starting with Shari’s interview and staying away from the sensationalist 20/20 documentary that Shari openly abhors.
Throughout The House of My Mother, Shari refers to her mother only by name; Ruby. Her status as ‘mother’ is stripped away. Shari’s siblings are referred to as ‘my brother’ and ‘my sister’ to preserve the little privacy they have left, save for her brother Chad. Even her father, Kevin, is mostly referred to by name. This decision to strip the privacy and familiarity from her parents and preserve that of her siblings is a calculated poetic justice given the nature of 8 Passengers, which exposed the children’s inner lives to strangers for money. Shari only writes about her own experiences and inner battles, leaving her siblings to decide whether to share their story when they’re ready.
Shari begins by recounting the early lives of her parents with cold objectiveness. Ruby and Kevin, both Mormon, met as Utah State University students and got engaged two weeks later. Shari was born not long after, and her five siblings followed suit in the short years to come. Though Ruby, in her faux passionate courtroom plea, claims the abuse the children suffered was entirely due to Jodi Hildebrandt’s involvement, Shari details the early days of Ruby’s abusive nature long before Jodi became involved with the family, cementing her to readers as an uncaring, authoritative, and delusional woman.
Shari explains the cheery, wholesome family their channel’s millions of followers were familiar with was a transactional waking nightmare under Ruby’s iron fist and Kevin’s passive indifference. The children were coerced into filming their most embarrassing moments for trips to the mall, family vacations, and cash. There’s wholesomeness and humor sprinkled throughout so readers don’t feel entirely hopeless; childhood crushes, sibling friendships, and small moments of triumph. Shari’s witty personality and sharp perception skills stand out like a shiny pearl in the dark mush of her childhood, and her love and protectiveness of her siblings (as well as her decision to omit their names from the book) solidifies her as a truly caring older sister.
The book is sectioned into several titled parts with each more heavy than the last, and things take an exceptionally dark turn when Jodi Hildebrandt gets involved with the family (though I won’t be sharing specifics). Shari Franke doesn’t hold anything back and her writing is vivid enough to put readers in her shoes. I could almost feel her confusion, rage, and guilt. Each chapter thereafter had me gripping the steering wheel with disgust. Shari’s soul-crushing survivor’s guilt and helplessness against ineffective child-protection laws is a story all too common. It’s impossible to talk about Jodi Hildebrandt without discussing ConneXions, her thinly veiled “self-help” cult that Ruby dedicated the next few years of her life to. Shari details the tactics Jodi used to gaslight everyone around her into believing they were innately selfish and evil beings, and that Jodi was basically the second coming of Jesus Christ. The manipulation and abuse were so intense that Shari questioned her sanity, her world, and her personhood. Jodi reigned unchallenged. Even though I knew Shari would eventually leave and recover from watching her interviews, the stakes Shari presents are so high I still found myself wondering if she’d escape. It takes a lot of talent to make readers who already know the ending wonder what’s going to happen anyway.
After her mother’s arrest, Shari struggled to rewire her brain against the gaslighting and abuse she suffered at her hands. Yet, after everything, Shari still hopes her mother can find redemption. This wish of goodwill shouldn’t be mistaken for forgiveness; she vows to never forget what Ruby and Jodi did and hopes they never see the children again. (I, the reader, hope they rot in prison. But I wasn’t the victim so what do I know.) There isn’t much more I can say without diving into specifics, though there’s one part of the book I haven’t seen talked about enough; the relationship Shari has in college. Ruby Franke and Jodi Hildebrandt may have been sentenced, but there’s one more person who still needs to be behind bars.
The book may be about the horrors Ruby and Jodi committed against the family, but at its core, The House of My Mother tells the story of an eldest daughter fighting for her siblings. It’s about the love they had for each other and the ways they coped together in the face of abuse, exploitation, and trauma. Shari ends The House of My Mother with a call to action; regulating or outright banning family vlogging. This is something I think any sane person should rally behind. It’s one thing to post your children on Facebook and another to profit off every moment of their lives, forever cemented on the internet for anyone to see. The child labor, the exploitation, the lack of consent. Ban family vlogging. Ban it all.
Last year, I taught research for freshman composition students at a small public college. One of my best students had been deep into family vlogging, followed it for years, and then saw the crap hit the fan. She conducted a semester-long research project on family vlogging, focused on the Franke case and others, examining the insufficiency of law as it stands to deal with parents' exploitation of their children. She wrote an excellent end-of-term paper about it. I'm very proud of this student! She devised the topic and direction herself (I urge my students to research what interests them) and gave her arguments a lot of work. The last thing she sent me, a few months ago, was a clip of Shari Franke testifying before the Utah House of Representatives.
This reminds me of that clip that circulated online a little while ago where a little boy was crying over the death of his dog. The mother - not realising she was filming herself - kept telling the boy how to cry, which angle to cry from, how to hold his face etc. She keeps saying "act like you're crying" and the boy heartbreakingly says "I am crying." Pretty abhorrent