A home unlike all others

The sect's Hollywood beginnings make for a juicy read, with Father Yod at the wheel of a white Rolls-Royce and Julie Christie, Warren Beatty and John Lennon making regular appearances at the restaurant. The so-called Mother House was like a hippie Playboy mansion, where friends came to Sunday socials to listen to Father speak. The much smaller Father House was also a social hub, receiving visitors from the Seattle commune Love Israel.

Thanks to the rigorous sex practices, 51 Source Family babies were born -- all delivered naturally at home, in keeping with their distrust of traditional medicine. In the end, this would lead to the group's leaving Los Angeles, when a baby severely infected with staph had to be taken to the hospital, alerting the authorities to perhaps other unorthodox goings on in the three-bedroom house where more than 100 slept, many in stacked pods in the yard. Tuning in to apocalyptic visions, Father Yod initiated a move to Hawaii, where in 1975 he died after a hang gliding accident, eventually breaking apart the Family.

Said Isis, "We are just now starting the healing process." In the wake of their leader's death, "a lot of people left and shut the door behind them, and it's just now becoming safe for them to talk about it."

The book has been a crucial part of that healing process, honestly exploring the struggles of Father Yod's wife Robin, who married him as Jim Baker and, in Isis' words, "didn't sign up for any of it." It also gave Paralda a forum to address "Jim, Father Yod, YaHoWha" in an open letter. The onetime student of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi accused this "charismatic father figure" of seducing her and ultimately asked for the ability to forgive him and herself.

Rather than closing a chapter, however, the experience of revisiting the past has inspired Isis and some of the others to "continue this adventure." Seven have bought property on the Big Island in Hawaii, with the plan to form a co-housing community, supporting themselves with a health spa and, yes, a restaurant. Given the Family's vast scope of knowledge about nutrition and the healing arts, and even home births and deaths, both much more widely accepted today, it actually makes perfect sense. Isis said excitedly, "We could do some outrageous stuff still."