As the adopted son of two cult leaders, Benjamin Risha was raised to someday assume a place of leadership in the Tony and Susan Alamo Christian Foundation with the Bible, and his parents’ interpretation of it, as his guide. He believed the prophecies of his adoptive mother and father, which included them being the two prophets foretold in the Book of Revelations as preceding the second coming of Jesus Christ, then raising from the dead when they died, and such dire warnings as the ground opening up to swallow nonbelievers into hell. He was sure that Susan Alamo could raise the dead as promised.
However, when none of it happened, and the foundation slid from bucolic communal lifestyle to insufferable criminality that included absolute obedience to the Alamos, and polygamous marriages with girls as young as eight years old, Benjamin knew he had to escape. If he was caught trying to escape, he would be beaten nearly to death, forced to go without food and water for his sins, and he would be shamed in the community. He embarked on a journey to locate his birth parents, discover the truth about a world he knew nothing about … and find himself.
In The Son of Seven Mothers, Benjamin Risha takes listeners on a harrowing journey that few in the United States can imagine. And eventually he must choose between the life he knows—and was “chosen” to lead—and his freedom.
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Benjamin Risha was born a child of Arab and Jewish ancestry in the Tony and Susan Alamo religious cult. His purpose in the cult was to bring peace to Arabs and Jews, but fate had different plans for him. Risha escaped the cult when he was seventeen, joined the US Army Reserves when he was eighteen, went to university, learned several languages, and received several degrees and certificates, all while traveling the world. He has appeared on the Dr. Oz show, the Today show, Sundance TV, Investigation Discovery, and in People magazine.
Bronson Pinchot, Audible’s Narrator of the Year for 2010, has won Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Awards, AudioFile Earphones Awards, Audible’s Book of the Year Award, and Audie Awards for several audiobooks, including Matterhorn, Wise Blood, Occupied City, and The Learners. A magna cum laude graduate of Yale, he is an Emmy- and People’s Choice-nominated veteran of movies, television, and Broadway and West End shows. His performance of Malvolio in Twelfth Night was named the highlight of the entire two-year Kennedy Center Shakespeare Festival by the Washington Post. He attended the acting programs at Shakespeare & Company and Circle-in-the-Square, logged in well over 200 episodes of television, starred or costarred in a bouquet of films, plays, musicals, and Shakespeare on Broadway and in London, and developed a passion for Greek revival architecture.