The Contraption (ePub)

The wedding was weeks away for two young lovers, who had counted themselves lucky to have found one another. Then, it was over, as one of them abruptly disappeared. Audrey was not abducted. Not exactly. She was not taken against her will. Rather, her will itself had been taken. Coerced and controlled. Deceived and derailed. Matthias cannot walk away from the catastrophe, though he has nothing to go on, and is in the dark beyond all personal darkness he has ever known . . .

The Contraption is a novel that deals with the challenges faced by a woman who has been recruited into a dangerous, coercive religious cult. Her fiancé is left not knowing even where she is. Her name has been changed and she has been relocated to another state. The cult, Church of the Mountain of Radiance, is an all-controlling psychological prison.

Audrey was lured in initially through the deceptive tactics, self-hypnosis and guided imagery rituals brought to her by a team of recruiters. One step leads to another, as her mind becomes totally occupied by the propaganda, bizarre rituals, arcane rules, and thought-stopping practices of the group. A new personality emerges, an artificial "cult self" to go with her new name. Unfortunately, even strong-willed, intelligent people can be susceptible to such an operation. Matthias launches a struggling effort to find her, aided by certain family members and some cult researchers they meet along the way. Matt leads the search, and says he "just wants to talk to her." But his great hope is to snap her out of whatever this is, and resume the life they had before this most abrupt, heart-rending separation.

The author, Barton A. Stewart is a long time student of the cult phenomenon, and The Contraption will be among the most realistic fictional depictions of the kinds of things that can happen in cases like this. Avoiding the sensationalism of so many novels on this subject, Stewart offers a look into another world, which unfortunately exists in the here and now.

First and foremost, this is a story of lovers separated in the cruelest of ways, and the all-out effort to restore that love. The title comes from a cult researcher's analogy of mind control as a "faulty, buggy, man-made machine, inserted by deception into a healthy psyche." Mind control is the ultimate pitfall. And mind control is - The Contraption.

86,645 words. A portion of the proceeds of the first edition of The Contraption will benefit ICSA, the International Cultic Studies Association, the nation's oldest organization for educating the public on psychological abuse.