"Matches In The Gas Tank" by Carla Powers

I bought this book when it first came out.  It is an excellent book detailing what the Radio Church of God/Worldwide Church of God was like back in the 50's and 60's.  While I never had a father such as hers, the descriptions she has of life in the Church are spot on.

Carla Powers is a self made woman who is proof that there is a life after Armstrongism.

She finished Baylor Law School and passed the bar at 22. Five and a half years later, Carla became the first woman partner in a 100-lawyer Houston firm. For the next 15 years, she tried cases, was an adjunct professor at the University of Houston Law Center, wrote articles, and gave speeches. In 2000, she joined a major multinational energy company and three years later became worldwide head of litigation. But success didn’t make Carla happy.

When an inner voice awakened her in the middle of the night and told her to start writing, she realized that she’d found a calling: sharing the transformational power that comes from acknowledging life's difficult experiences and breaking away the walls of shame that keep us from our true purpose.

Matches in the Gas Tank, A Memoir by Carla Powers

Carla Powers was Daddy's princess back in Arkansas in the late 1950s. Then Daddy got religion.
That religion, based in the teachings and deprivation of narrow-minded, punitive ministers, tormented her dangerous alcoholic father and her entire family. Growing up, Carla never knew a woman could do anything more than she was asked—or demanded—to do. She definitely never imagined that other worlds would open up to her and she would rise to become a powerful attorney.

Matches in the Gas Tank tells the story of life inside the Radio Church of God and the influence of Herbert W. Armstrong, the Church's founder and prophet. Under his influence, Carla's family moved away from relatives and friends to Big Sandy, Texas, an enclave in which everyone lived by strict and unforgiving rules arbitrarily determined by Armstrong. His vision of how to get to "The Kingdom of God" and avoid a sea of flames consisted of unending lists of rules covering everything from food consumption, to financial responsibilities, to sexual behavior.

The only way to rise above the poverty level was to become a minister, and the only way to become a minister was to continually police your neighbors for sin. Ministers were allowed to barge in a home any time of the day or night to inspect everything from the cleanliness of a family's kitchen to the contents of their tax returns.

This is the story of how Carla escaped the control of the church and found a way to deal with the legacy of abuse and shame left to her by her father. As she embraces her difficult childhood, she comes to understand that while those we love have the power to hurt us, they can't destroy us. We can find strength in unexpected places.

Anyone who has had a less-than-perfect family, has struggled with the faith of her fathers or has gone through recovery from abuse, perfectionism, or any cult of personality will connect with the power of redemption in this moving memoir.

Check out her site here:  Carla Powers: Purpose Beyond the Power Suit