As a nice Jewish girl raised in an upwardly mobile, status-seeking family, Cassandra Langer never conformed to her mother's gender expectations. When her mother fell prey to a cult leader representing himself as a child behavior expert, Langer was incarcerated for two years as a teenager and barely escaped a lobotomy. The author hopes that those who feel helpless might find some skills to survive and thrive in this book. Her story of surviving 20th-century conversion therapy is set in 1950...