In the Shadow of the Moons: My Life in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Family by Nansook Hong; hardback; 234 pp; $23; Little, Brown. ($16.10 at Amazon.com)

Early in this account of her traumatic life as a member of the Unification Church's True Family, Nan Sook Hong recalls a tale from her family's past.

She recalls her grandmother's virulent opposition to her daughter's involvement in Rev. Sun Myung Moon's fledgling church. In 1961, so the story goes, Grandmother Hong was hammering on the doors of the church, unsuccessfully trying to prevent her daughter's marriage to a man she did not know but who had been chosen for her by Rev. Moon.

Hong reports that Rev. Moon remembers to this day the angry old woman beating his chest with her fists after the wedding ceremony was completed.

Rev. Moon was the winner that day.

But Grandmother Hong may well have the last laugh. Her granddaughter's indictment of the True Family; of her former husband and erstwhile heir- apparent to the Unificationist throne; of his drinking, drug use and cavorting with prostitutes; of Rev. and Mrs. Moon's paralysis in the face of their son's depredations; and of their incredible willingness to fund his rampages; all of this, 37 years after Grandmother Hong pounded fruitlessly on Rev. Moon's door, could spell the death knell for the Unification Church in the West, and perhaps worldwide.

Nansook Hong's memoir is devastating.

While it frequently lapses into stale and questionable criticism of church practices and motivations, and while some of it seems to have been written by the anti-cult crowd that is currently holding her hand, this indictment of the church and the family that personifies it screams for a response.

We read here of Hyo-Jin Moon's squandering of vast amounts of money, handed to him easily and airily by his mother. Up his nose, in the form of white powder, went the fruits of the labors of thousands of dedicated missionaries slaving long hours in baking heat and freezing cold selling trinkets and flowers. His endless forays into the bar scene of New York City, his $150 tips, his extra-marital affairs, his furious rages and his mad acquisition of guns, all continued long after his much-publicized and tearful confessions.

We read that Mrs. Moon once handed Hong $100,000 and told her it was "seed money" for her family. Hyo-Jin told her to place it in a safe deposit box, which she did. What church member who has ever sold flowers from dawn to dusk will not resent the fact that Hyo-Jin took that $100,000 and transformed it into a $30,000 gold-plated gun for his father and used the rest to buy motorbikes for himself and his brothers?

Hyo-Jin, almost at will, flew here and there to pursue his affairs. From girlfriends in Korea and California, to a church sister working at the Manhattan Center, Hyo-Jin indulged his sexual urges. It was from Hyo-Jin that Hong received a venereal disease and many beatings.

All this, and so much more, Hong recounts in detail that rings as true as a gold brick at Fort Knox.

But that is not the worst of it. It has been an open secret for years that Hyo-Jin is an embarrassment to humanity. What is especially dangerous for the survival of the Unification Church is Hong's depiction of Rev. and Mrs. Moon as regal figures, unconcerned about the behavior of the crown prince. While exhorting their followers to strict standards of propriety, standards those followers tried hard to observe, the Moons turned a blind eye to their son's astonishing perversions.

Indeed, they funded him without cease. The "Son of the Messiah," as Hyo-Jin liked to refer to himself, was denied nothing. No grossness, no betrayal, no sin, ever caused the easy flow of money to dry up.

The blame for Hyo-Jin's behavior, according to Hong, was laid at her feet by her mother- and father-in-law. Did she not know that she was supposed to act like a lady during the day but like a woman at night? If she satisfied her husband better, perhaps he would not wander so much. It was her duty to change Hyo-Jin, to rein in his obscenities. That was why she had been chosen to be his wife.

Hong was 15 when she was given to Hyo-Jin in holy matrimony. He consummated their marriage that afternoon, in the eyes of American law committing statutory rape. Thirty years old, now, Hong marvels that a 15-year-old child should have been expected to control a man who the Messiah himself could not handle.

Well she might wonder.

There is much for Unificationists to wonder about in this book.

Hong relates her amazement as she discovered that the True Children did not know the words to Pledge, words she had long mastered. Most of them do not speak Korean, something ordinary members are urged ceaselessly to learn. None of them, she said, could be described even as ordinarily pious.

"The evil at the heart of the Unification Church is the hypocrisy and deceit of the Moons, a family that is all too human in its incredible level of dysfunction," Hong writes. "To continue to promote the myth that the Moons are spiritually superior to the idealistic young people who are drawn to the church is a shameful deceit."

It will not do for Rev. Moon to insist that church members not question his family's affairs. He is answerable, for his claim on the lives of the young missionaries who worked for his cause day and night, rests entirely on his position as the True Father.

The legions of idealistic youngsters who flocked to his banner in the 1970s and 1980s did not do so because he is a dab hand with the tuna. They did so because he claimed to have formed the first perfect family, the foundation stone on which a new world would be built.

He has since been abandoned by Ye-Jin Moon, his daughter and oldest child. His oldest son is dissolute in the extreme and was never called to account. The Moons' parenting skills appear to reside on the low end of human achievement.

That must be explained. It must be accounted for. If the Moons continue to take the regal approach and thumb their noses at the untold sacrifice of thousands of their followers, the church is surely doomed.

Toward the end of her book, Hong suggests that the Unification Church will indeed be buried with Rev. Moon. She may be right. Yet, ironically, if the church survives it could be in large part because of the book she has written.

In these pages perhaps lie the seeds of a new Unificationism, one which abandons the idolatry of the True Family and pursues instead the building of loving, God-centered families. In the Principles of Creation, the Fall of Man and the Mission of Jesus, derivative though Hong insists those teachings are, we have the potential for a serious philosophy.

It may well be, however, that like a butterfly discarding its chrysalis, Unificationism will have to join Hong and break from the True Family if it wishes to fly.

Read InJin Moon's 2005 letter to Unification members: Dr. Bo Hi Pak has been in debtor's prison in Korea for one year. Money is needed; Rev. Sun Myung Moon won't provide the funds.

Learn about Korean management culture in the Unification Church of America: an expert on Korea gives an insider's account of how Korean cultural patterns impact the Unification Church in the West.

Read Tim Folzenlogen's testimony about his personal experience with Hyun Jin Nim.

Go to other "On-line Unificationist Publications."

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