Michelle Dowd, the author of the sometimes-grim memoir “Forager: Field Notes for Surviving a Family Cult,” is walking through a garden on a sunny Saturday, offering her own field notes on the plants we passed.
“There’s a lot of lavender here,” Dowd says during our stroll in the . “You can use it in cooking.”
“The leaves of sage are edible,” Dowd says at another point. “You can use it on salads and sandwiches. Or just make a meal on it.”
Dowd made meals or snacks wherever she could find them during her childhood in the San Gabriel Mountains above Wrightwood.
From 1976-86, she was part of a closed Christian community, founded in Arcadia, that lived on leased land in the Angeles National Forest and spent its time preparing for the apocalypse.
Known as The Field, the encampment was led by her grandfather, whose followers, including Dowd’s parents, believed he was a prophet who would live to the biblical age of 500. (He fell short.)
Running afoul of the community’s strict rules by exchanging love notes with a boy, Dowd was kicked out in her late teens — the boy, naturally, wasn’t punished — and made her own way in the world. Now she’s a journalism professor at Chaffey College and a writer of nonfiction.
Her 2023 memoir, published by an imprint of Hachette, has been a minor sensation in hardcover, paperback and audiobook, selling more than 15,000 copies.
In “Forager’s” wake, Dowd was and, on April 17, got a huge boost through a podcast chat with Joe Rogan — more on that in a moment.
I witnessed a small milestone along the way.
Early in the pandemic, Dowd and I coincidentally showed up at the same time at the same place, the sidewalk outside , to buy the same product, a Sunday New York Times, and introduced ourselves. I wanted the paper to read. She wanted it because she had an essay in it.
Her essays won her the attention that led to “Forager,” which she started writing that fall and finished the following spring.
If Dowd could write “Forager” over again, she’d do it differently. Her book is told from her perspective as a child, with only the information available to her at the time. That approach has its drawbacks. “It’s not a good analysis of a cult,” she admits.
In the year since publication, she’s heard from other members of The Field as well as from members, current or past, of other cults.
“A lot of women from previous cults, and some men, have contacted me and said there are so many similarities,” Dowd says. And from The Field, which still exists, but in somewhat different form and under a new name, teenagers have gotten in touch surreptitiously.
“They say: ‘They tell us you’re crazy. I’m reading your book, we’re not supposed to, and it feels true,’” Dowd says.
A man told her at an author event that her grandfather had abused him and that he’d had nightmares for years. The nightmares only stopped when he read her book and realized he wasn’t crazy.
“Many people who came out of this have never sustained a relationship, never married, never had children,” says Dowd, who has managed to do all three.
“I was already shunned” by The Field, Dowd says, but since her book’s publication, “it’s like I’m the enemy.”
Cults are hard to define, Dowd admits. Most would reject the label. “High-control organization” is another way to describe them.
In a cult, Dowd says, usually there is a charismatic male leader who tries to control or regulate members’ behavior, information, thoughts and emotions. Many cults are small and never achieve any public notice. Some might pass as evangelical Christian groups.
Dowd is no expert. When people describe their group to her and ask nervously if it’s a cult, she responds: “You should answer the question yourself. Are you being controlled?”
She says: “I think there are a lot of cults out there. A lot of people want to be told what to do.”
She fought the use of “cult” in her memoir’s subtitle, thinking it was too on-the-nose, but says: “In retrospect I think they were exactly right.”
She’s at work on a second memoir, tentatively titled “Prodigal Daughter,” which will pick up her story from her 30s. It’ll be a book about recovery.
The biblical prodigal son, she notes, “comes back and is welcomed. There are really no stories of women who are allowed to come back” after banishment.
Now, about “The Joe Rogan Experience.” His team contacted her out of the blue in late February.
Although she’d never listened to his show, she realized she was being offered an enormous platform via his 14 million followers on Spotify and millions more on Apple Music and YouTube.
Had anyone from the Inland Empire ever been featured on Rogan? There can’t have been many, if any.
“It felt like I should say yes,” Dowd says. She was booked for April 17.
She doesn’t know why she was invited by Rogan, who tends to interview comedians and mixed martial arts fighters and whose guests, like his audience, overwhelmingly skew male.
From his on-air questions she gleaned that Rogan was interested in how people are indoctrinated into cults, about how they are deprogrammed and about religion.
The studio compound in an undisclosed location in Austin, Texas, has “a lot of testosterone,” she cracks. She and Rogan conducted the interview over cigars.
She liked reaching an audience that might not read books but could be receptive to her message.
“My brother is a huge Rogan fan,” Dowd says. And so, to calm her nerves during the taping, which lasted three hours and , she told herself: “Oh, I’m talking to my brother.”
The aftermath of her turn in the spotlight is yet to be known. got a big boost in traffic. Somewhat surreally, on Rogan’s next episode the host brought up Dowd by name while interviewing Tucker Carlson.
After “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Dowd’s survival skills may be needed more than ever.
David Allen forages for columns Friday, Sunday and Wednesday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.
