Sister Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Finding Freedom

Sister Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Family, and Finding Freedom is a memoir by Christine Brown Woolley, who is best known for her decades-long appearance on the popular TLC reality series Sister Wives. In her memoir, Woolley details her experience of polygamy, incorporating humor and self-reflection to explore how her marriage to Kody Brown and interactions with her three sister wives influenced her eventual departure from her fundamentalist sect of the Mormon church. The memoir explores themes such as the Costs of Unequal Intimacy, Redefining Selfhood Outside of Institutional Belonging, and the Influence of Televised Narratives on the Truth.

This guide refers to the 2025 Gallery Books hardback edition of the novel.

Content Warning: Both the source text and this guide include depictions of substance use, addiction, emotional abuse, child abuse, mental illness, sexual content, pregnancy complications, graphic violence, death, and death by suicide.

Summary

Christine Brown Woolley’s memoir Sister Wife is written from the author’s first-person perspective and organized into a prologue, four titled sections, and an epilogue. Each section traces a different era of Woolley’s life and follows a linear plot progression. Throughout the memoir, Woolley combines past-tense accounting of her childhood, adolescence, and adult life with retrospective commentary from her present-day point of view.

Woolley grew up in Taylorsville, Utah, with her family. She was deeply involved in a fundamentalist sect of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), and she felt safe and loved by this community. Her grandfathers were particularly influential in their religion and were outspoken about their fundamentalist sect’s polygamous practices. Woolley never questioned the concept of plural marriage, as her father had more than one wife and she had more than one mom. Woolley even hoped to become part of a plural marriage when she came of age.

Woolley was deeply hurt when her mother, Annie, left the church and her father. Perceiving Annie’s decision as a personal and religious betrayal, Woolley adhered even more closely to her faith, becoming more pious than ever before. Meanwhile, she developed a close kinship with her new youth group leader, Kody Brown, and his wife, Meri. When Kody chose a woman named Janelle as his second wife, Woolley was hopeful that he would choose her as his third wife. Her dream came true, and they married in 1994.

Despite Woolley’s investment in and attachment to Kody, her marriage proved difficult from her wedding day onward, as Kody soon became more distant than he had ever been with Woolley. Their first sexual encounter was unpleasant and set a precedent for their sex life over the years to come. At the same time, Woolley was shocked to learn that Kody and Meri constantly fought and that Meri and Janelle were always at odds. She found herself caught between these interpersonal conflicts and was unable to advocate for her own needs.

Amidst her ongoing tensions with Kody and her sister wives, Woolley started having children. She loved all of her children, but she couldn’t help but feel offended that Kody didn’t invest in them as much as he did in the children of her sister wives. She tried desperately to connect with Meri and Janelle, finding it particularly difficult to resolve her disagreements with Meri.

In the meantime, Woolley started speaking out about her faith-based traditions, beliefs, and practices. As she shared these ideas with the world, her public appearances soon garnered the attention of the entertainment industry, and she and her family agreed to shoot the pilot for what would become Sister Wives. When TLC picked up the reality series, which featured the Brown family’s polygamous lifestyle, Woolley was hopeful that the project would bring her family together and educate the American public on her belief system.

Over time, however, the show changed Woolley’s outlook on herself, her marriage, her faith, and her lifestyle. She would watch past episodes and notice how selfish she could be or how poor her communication style could appear. She used these episodes as personal lessons. Meanwhile, she noticed that the show presented a new version of reality to her, and she came to understand how self-involved Kody was, particularly when he married his fourth wife, Robyn.

Robyn’s integration into the family created numerous disruptions. In her memoir, Woolley reflects on her attempts to include Robyn but details all the times that Robyn betrayed her trust. Kody consistently put Robyn above his other wives, which upset the already delicate balance in their family life.

These inequalities worsened over the years. When the family finally moved to Flagstaff, Woolley gained more insight into who she wanted to be and what she needed to do in order to change her life. She had already begun to distance herself from the church, and she ultimately lost her faith and decided to leave Kody. She announced these decisions to her family on television. Shortly thereafter, Woolley relocated to her home state of Utah and restarted her life with her youngest daughter, Truely.

With the encouragement of her children, Woolley eventually started dating again. When she met and fell in love with a man named David, they eventually moved in together and fostered a passionate relationship. Woolley holds that David has transformed her definitions of love and intimacy, but she also argues that their relationship would never have happened if she hadn’t worked on herself first.

In the epilogue, Woolley reflects on all of the experiences that have made her the person she is today. She reflects on her marriage with Kody, her relationships with her sister wives, her decision to leave the church, and her time on Sister Wives. She feels like a stronger person today because of the risks she has taken, and she hopes the same is true for her readers.