Interest in Shari Franke’s Memoir Surges Following Hulu Docuseries
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It’s a tragedy that’s become familiar but no less heartbreaking — behind the scenes of a picture-perfect family is something much darker. Ruby Franke‘s family vlog, 8 Passengers, told of an idyllic life in the Church of Latter-Day Saints. Behind the scenes was disturbing behavior that led to her arrest on charges of aggravated child abuse. In the new Hulu series, Devil in the Family, Franke’s husband and children tell their side of the story.
Franke’s daughter, Shari, is extensively interviewed in the special, and it’s not the first time she decided to tell her story. She also penned The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom, which was released in January.
The House of My Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom
The House of My Mother has remained an Amazon bestseller since its release, sitting at #7 as of this writing. It’s also #15 on the Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction chart on the New York Times’ Best Seller list.
The book details the increasing influence of Jodi Hildebrandt, who ran a counseling business called ConneXions Classroom, over Ruby Franke and the Franke family. Hildebrandt was convicted of aggravated child abuse for instituting increasingly draconian measures on the children of the Franke family. Ruby Franke was also arrested and convicted. The channel had millions of subscribers before being taken down following the allegations of abuse.
In an interview with Rolling Stone from January, Shari Franke called out family vlogging as a whole, saying, “Making money off your kids [with] no oversight as to how much the kids are getting paid — there’s no way to do that well for me.”
Franke, who is a student at BYU, also emphasized her desire for privacy in her Rolling Stone interview, and saw writing a book as part of that, “Writing the book was a way to take back my privacy, as strange as that sounds. Just because it was Ruby who took my voice away… and then with the arrest, it was the media then that picked a side of me to portray.” The Audible audiobook is narrated by Shari Franke.