Dinner for Vampires: Life on a Cult TV Show (While also in an Actual Cult!)

Les is the “spiritual leader” of the Family cult and the primary antagonist of Joy’s memoir. Although he presents as wise and charming, he ultimately reveals himself to be criminal, controlling, and cruel. When Joy first meets Les, she finds him a little off-putting. She describes how “there was something intimate and grotesque about watching his hairy fingers dig into the wet mass” as he prepared marinated meat for dinner (38). However, this initial instinct is overwhelmed when Les presents himself as a “sweet pastor, doing his best to get a congregation out of the rigid mindset of structure and religion, getting persecuted, having his family kicked out of their home […] “ (41). Les proceeds to insinuate himself into the Bible study group, Joy’s life, and the lives of the Van Hewitt family. He uses his position of authority as their “spiritual leader” to control all aspects of their lives and swindle Joy in particular out of a substantial amount of her income.

Joy’s memoir ultimately depicts Les as a selfish misogynist who uses a tenuous reading of Biblical scripture to justify his beliefs. She describes the ways he teaches his sons that women should obey their husbands without question, encouraging their tendencies to act out violently by justifying them as expressions of their passion. He overlooks Kurt’s sexual assault, failing to protect the vulnerable foster daughter who comes to him for help. Even though members of the group are struggling financially, he lives in the largest room of the house and indulges in luxuries like cable television.

Throughout the memoir, Les displays an inflated sense of ego. He decides to buy a motel despite not having any experience running that kind of business. When it fails, he moves on to a restaurant, which likewise fails. Joy notes that Les idolizes Tony Soprano from the HBO television show The Sopranos he believes that both he and Tony were “always under attack from outside forces and did whatever [they] had to do to keep [their] family together” (106). Joy frames this choice of role model as an early indication of Les’s criminal mindset. When he is finally brought to trial, he claims innocence of all the charges, giving what Joy describes as “a tour de force performance” (297).

Quiet Boy, Les’s oldest son, is Joy’s husband and father of her daughter, Rosie. QB initially presents himself as a quiet, awkward boy who lives in the shadow of his charismatic and domineering father. During their courtship, QB is sweet and thoughtful toward Joy. He gives her a thoughtful handmade gift of a journal in a locked box. During their courtship, he writes her letters and acts “playful.” However, Joy describes indications, even before their marriage, that he was unstable—for example, punching his brothers’ door so hard that he needed “a heavy brace on his wrist” (158).

After their marriage, this kind of violent outburst became more common. QB stopped being so playful with Joy. Instead, he sought to control every aspect of her life. When she challenged him, even in small ways, he reacted violently and aggressively. Joy portrays him as a typical abuser who acts charming to disarm their victim and then once they are under their control acts violently towards them.

Joy portrays QB as lazy and selfish, never holding down a job and relying on her income. After their child is born, he comes to Wilmington to help care for their daughter, Rosie. However, after only a few months he decides to hire a nanny “so he [can] go ‘do stuff’ during the day,” by which Joy understands him to mean “the gym” (242).

After their divorce, Joy comes to an understanding about QB’s behavior. She does not hold him entirely responsible, recognizing instead that “he never had a chance to be his own person” (282). He was “a vacant lot for Les to park all his own thoughts, ideas, and desires” (282). She ultimately believes that many of QB’s harmful behaviors were modeled and even encouraged by his father, Les.

Pamela Van Hewitt is Harker and Abe’s mother and the maternal figure in the Family. She enforces Les’s belief system and uses her motherly influence to draw in members of the group and control their behavior. After a difficult childhood in which her parents were not overly affectionate, Joy responds strongly to Pam’s warmth. She describes Pam’s “unabashed maternal affection” as “a comfort [she] desperately needed” (34). Pam uses this position of power to encourage Joy to accept aspects of Les’s teachings with which she feels uncomfortable. For example, Pam meets with Joy to tell her that she is “proud” of Joy for distancing herself from her parents after arriving at the Big House, further isolating her from outside sources of support.

Pam is entirely committed to Les and his teachings, even when it creates conflict in her own family. Joy suggests that Pam might have had an intimate relationship with Les, stating that she “ha[s] some suspicions” about the pair of them (294). For example, her husband Ed gives Mina and Harker a car when theirs breaks down. Les objects because he feels it denies the pair “a valuable lesson about hard work” (190). Instead of siding with her husband, “Pam agreed with Les” (190), and Ed is forced to apologize. 

After Joy divorces QB, Pam serves her with divorce papers. In this moment, Joy recognizes how disordered Pam’s belief system truly is, writing “somewhere in her twisted mind […] Pam believed she was doing [Joy] some great favor” (268).