Beck, Martha 1962-
(Martha Nibley Beck)

PERSONAL:

Born 1962, in Provost, UT; daughter of Hugh (a university professor) and Phyllis Nibley; married John C. Beck (a professor, writer, and consultant; divorced); partner of Karen Gerdes; children: three. Education: Harvard University, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Phoenix, AZ. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Crown Publishers, 1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, sociologist, and career counselor, life coach. American Graduate School for International Management, Phoenix, AZ, visiting professor. Appeared on the television series Good Day Arizona. O, The Oprah Magazine, columnist. North Star Method, (seminars, workshops, and life-coach training), founder and creator. Special Olympics, international board, member.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Danforth Award, Harvard University.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

(With husband John C. Beck) Breaking the Cycle of Compulsive Behavior, Deseret (Salt Lake City, UT), 1990.

(With J.C. Beck) The Change of a Lifetime: Employment Patterns among Japan's Managerial Elite, University of Hawaii Press (Honolulu, HI), 1994.

Breaking Point: Why Women Fall Apart and How They Can Re-create Their Lives, Times Books (New York, NY), 1997.

Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic, Times Books (New York, NY), 1999.

Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live, Crown Publishers (New York, NY), 2001.

The Joy Diet: 10 Daily Practices for a Happier Life, Crown Publishers (New York, NY), 2003.

Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith, Crown Publishers (New York, NY), 2005.

Columnist, Mademoiselle.

SIDELIGHTS:

Martha Beck studied for a career as a sociologist, and her earliest writings are in that field. The book Breaking Point: Why Women Fall Apart and How They Can Re-create Their Lives is a sociological study that enabled the author to move from academic writing into the popular genre. A Kirkus Reviews contributor described the book as a "cogent view of the forces that drive many women to radical turning points in their lives."

Prompted by a breaking point in her own life, Beck abandoned the academe to devote herself to nurturing a family. She moved from the ivy-covered walls of Harvard University to the arid expanse of the southwestern United States and became a freelance writer. It was a radical move for the author, but she discovered hundreds of other women in the United States and abroad who had faced and surmounted a similar career crisis.

In Breaking Point Beck analyzes the literally impossible situation in which many women of the late twentieth century found themselves. Most single mothers and many married ones had to work to support their children, yet they were often criticized for abandoning their traditional roles as homemakers and care-givers. Women were encouraged to exercise their freedom to succeed in the workplace, but the tension created by the exercise took its toll in the home. Most workplaces were not designed to accommodate the needs of a family's primary care-giver, and in many families, that caregiver was the mother. The breaking point can occur, Beck suggested, when the conflicting demands in a woman's life render decision-making and active response completely and literally impossible. This paralysis crosses economic, racial, cultural, and age boundaries, according to Beck. In some cases a woman could succeed in re-creating herself, and such success stories were reported in Breaking Point.

The personal breaking point came for Beck when she discovered that her accidental pregnancy during graduate school would result in a son with Down's syndrome. Abortion was not an option for her. The pregnancy was difficult, Beck's academic workload was a burden, and a series of both related and independent emergencies sapped her strength and threatened her well-being. The miracle to which she attributes her salvation is the subject of Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic.

During the pregnancy, Beck began to experience strange events that, even as an atheist, she eventually accepted as paranormal occurrences—well-meaning and supportive spirits who protected her, magical visions, puzzling sounds, messages from "the other side." Over time, the author came to believe her unborn son to be the source of the miracles that were changing her life and her entire family. Expecting Adam documents what Time reviewer Margaret Carlson called "the journey from being smart to becoming wise."

Readers and reviewers alike have been touched by this nonfiction account. A Kirkus Reviews contributor found Expecting Adam to be both "wickedly funny and wrenchingly sad." The book succeeds, Susan Cheever suggested in the New York Times Book Review, because "Beck's voice is so sympathetic and most of her details are so accurate that they frequently carry all before them." The Publishers Weekly reviewer recommended the book as "a convincing appeal not only to stop and smell the roses but to love the thorns." The Kirkus Reviews critic concluded: "Even skeptics will find magic in this story, and parents of a Down's syndrome child will cherish it."

Beck supplies more advice for healthy living with her Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live. She employs the metaphor of the North Star as a fixed point to help one stay on course. It is a "cheerful and perceptive" book, according to a reviewer for Publishers Weekly. Beck posits that social and external influences often inhibit a person from discovering their true self, and provides exercises to help recognize whether one is unfulfilled or not. She also provides a four-step pattern for changing behavior. Lisa Wise, writing in Library Journal, praised Beck's "humor, experience, and highly readable style."

Beck furthers her plan for realizing potential and building a more satisfied life with The Joy Diet: 10 Daily Practices for a Happier Life. Some of the steps in the process include doing nothing and committing to telling the absolute truth about your own life and your feelings. Taking small risks is also part of the ten-step program; such insignificant risks can lead to taking larger, life-and career-changing risks. Kathleen A. Sullivan, writing in the Library Journal, concluded that even if a person did not follow all of Beck's steps, practicing some of them "may reinforce positive, rather than negative, behaviors."

In her 2005 memoir, Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith, Beck provides a personal voyage of self-discovery as she moved away from the Mormon religion of her youth. In the book she also asserts that her father, a Brigham Young University professor and major apologist for the Mormon creed, sexually abused her when she was a child. Beck's family members denied the charges, and the Mormon Church denounced the book. Beck's father died shortly before publication of the work, but in the memoir, Beck records him denying such allegations. The author also claims that her father's academic works defending Mormonism are mostly fictions and his research made up. Beck's memoir drew significant critical attention from both sides of the issue. Booklist reviewer Ilene Cooper found Leaving the Saints to be a "powerful testament to the stranglehold that family and faith can put on people," and commended Beck for being an "extraordinarily good writer." However, Books & Culture contributor Robert L. Millet, a professor of religion at Brigham Young University, thought the same work was "a slap in the face of one of Mormonism's greatest intellectuals and yet another roadblock to a religious tradition seeking to be better understood in a world that is desperately in need of understanding." A contributor to O, The Oprah Magazine, called the same work "Beck's uncensored account of her chilling discovery" of her father's abuse. Karen Traynor, writing in Library Journal, noted that Beck's memoir also charts "a spiritual awakening that comes to take the place of Mormonism in her life."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, July, 1997, Barbara Jacobs, review of Breaking Point: Why Women Fall Apart and How They Can Re-create Their Lives, p. 1779; December 1, 1998, Toni Hyde, review of Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic, p. 624; March 15, 2005, Ilene Cooper, review of Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith, p. 1244.

Books & Culture, July-August, 2005, Robert L. Millet, review of Leaving the Saints, p. 33.

Christian Century, April 5, 2000, Kathleen Housley, review of Expecting Adam, p. 392; March 21, 2006, Amy Johnson Frykholm, review of Leaving the Saints, p. 25.

Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 1997, review of Breaking Point, p. 922; December 1, 1998, review of Expecting Adam.

Library Journal, March 1, 2001, Lisa Wise, review of Finding Your Own North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant To Live, p. 116; November 15, 2003, Kathleen A. Sullivan, review of The Joy Diet: 10 Daily Practices for a Happier Life, p. 116; March 15, 2006, Karen Traynor, review of Leaving the Saints, p. 110.

New York Times Book Review, May 16, 1999, Susan Cheever, review of Expecting Adam, p. 11.

O, The Oprah Magazine, May, 2003, Martha Beck, "The Joy Diet," p. 93; March, 2005, review of Leaving the Saints, p. 168.

People, April 11, 2005, Michelle Green and Vickie Bane, "Leaving Home: In a New Book, Martha Beck Accuses Her Father, a Mormon Scholar, of Sex Abuse," p. 109.

Publishers Weekly, June 2, 1997, review of Breaking Point, p. 59; December 7, 1998, review of Expecting Adam, p. 42; February 5, 2001, review of Finding Your Own North Star, p. 80.

Time, May 10, 1999, Margaret Carlson, review of Expecting Adam, p. 90.

Washington Post, May 8, 2005, R.T. Reid, "Daughter's Denunciation of Historian Roils Mormon Church," p. A3.

Women's Review of Books, February, 1998, Ann Withorn, review of Breaking Point, pp. 15-16.

ONLINE

Desert Morning News Online,http://www.desertnews.com/ (February 5, 2005), Dennis Lythgoe, "Nibley Siblings Outraged Over Sister's Book"; (February 25, 2005), Carrie A. Moore, "Revered LDS Scholar Hugh Nibley Dies at 94."

Leaving the Saints Web site,http://www.leavingthesaints.com/ (April 15, 2006).

Oprah.com,http://www.oprah.com/ (April 15, 2006), "Contribtutor: Martha Beck."