Free Baby Be Mine by Diane Fanning

the Church, the divorced couple worked on their relationship. For a couple interested in healing their family, their choice of congregation made sense. Although the Church had deep historical roots in polygamy, it now embraced monogamy as the basic principle of marriage. Solidarity of the family was a basic tenet of the faithful. The teachings led them to strengthen family ties through mutual respect and the building of healthy relationships.
    Unfortunately, their definition of marriage did not include the concept of equal rights for women—an absence that fed into Lisa’s feelings of worthlessness outside of her role as mother. The philosophy of equality between the sexes was considered disruptive to family life by the Church.
    The counseling and fellowship achieved the desired goal for Carl and Lisa. Eight months after they started attending the church, they remarried in a service there on June 11,1994.
    The 1993 pregnancy vanished into thin air. It was a new year and Lisa was telling her family that she was pregnant again—this time with twins. Carl knew the only place the pregnancy existed was in Lisa’s own mind. Her mother,Judy, doubted it was possible. She’d been at the hospital with Lisa when she had her tubes tied. She believed her daughter was lying again.
    Carl, Lisa and the four children then moved to Deming, New Mexico. Carl claimed the move was initiated by Lisa, who could not bear to stick around Springdale after months passed and no birth was forthcoming. Carl’s father, Richard, owned a double-wide trailer there, and the young Boman family moved in and made a fresh start.
    Deming was located in the southwest corner of New Mexico—west of Las Cruces and El Paso, Texas—just off of Interstate 10. It was the seat of Luna County, the “Chile capital of the world” where the long growing season made a success of crops like green and red chilies, melons, pecans, cotton and a variety of grains and vegetables.
    In the early 1800s, Deming was such a rough place that outlaws rounded up in Arizona were given a one-way ticket to Deming as punishment. Many now were glad to call Deming home. Surrounded by wide-open spaces, clean air, mountains, high desert and panoramic views, Deming was a place where the sunshine was nearly constant and cacti sprout on every bare patch of ground. Because of its high elevation, warm summer days were tempered by comfortable nights, clear skies dominated the winter months and humidity was low year round.
    The beauty and bounty of colorful desert rocks in and around Deming earned it the moniker of a “Rock-Hunters Paradise.” It was a small town compared to the Bomans’ last home in Springdale. Deming’s population was just over 14,000. The stark landscape was in sharp contrast to the endless green wildness of the Ozark Mountain home they left behind.
    Carl worked as a delivery man for a restaurant, the Desert Inn. Lisa got a job working for the local newspaper,
The Headlight
, as an inserter and route supervisor. The periodical was published Monday through Friday and had a daily circulation of 3,700.
    At home, Lisa raised chickens and goats. She taught all of her children how to weave, dye and spin the wool she harvested from the goats. She had boundless reserves of energy for pursuit of this back-to-the-earth hobby.
    Her poor household habits, however, showed no sign of improvement. Carl’s supervisor, Bill Boomhower, said, “You could barely walk through the place. The only time the place got clean was when Carl did it. Teachers at the Sunshine School would take care of the children and bring in clean clothes for them.”
    â€œLisa was very quiet,” Bill said. “She didn’t have a lot of friends.”
    Monica Gutierrez, Lisa’s coworker at
The Headlight
told reporters, “She loved her kids. She was always with them. She was always worried about them.”
    Unlike most of the others at the newspaper,