The polygamous wives writing club : from the diaries of Mormon pioneer women /

Harline excerpts the diaries and autobiographies of 29 Mormon women in polygamous marriages to provide a glimpse into polygamy and early Mormonism. From its founding in the 1820s and through most of the 19th century, Mormons were encouraged to enter polygamous marriages for many reasons, including that it was essential to their salvation. During this period, about 30% of Mormons were in polygamous relationships, including women, men, and their children. While the diaries are interesting, Harline's approach-not quite an academic treatise, but more than just a collection of primary sources-results in the book feeling shallow and dry. She provides basic information on the history of polygamous Mormon marriages and uses her sources to suggest that, overall, polygamy hurt women. The book is strongest in the images it evokes through anecdotes from the women themselves: the joy of dancing the night away with their husbands, the stress of living with a "sister wife" when neither liked the other, the sorrow of feeling their husbands preferred a new wife over them. Harline allows polygamy to not just exist in stereotypes, exoticism, or distortion; she gives it names and faces and real stories. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Cute title aside, the approach that Harline (college writing, Univ. of Idaho; Brigham Young Univ.; Utah Valley Univ.) takes to improving readers' understanding of 19th-century Mormon polygamy is wonderful. The author presents an insider's view of what it was like to be a wife in a polygamous Mormon family. Using first-person accounts in the form of autobiographies, memoirs, and diaries, Harline lets the women speak for themselves; their accounts cover everything from the initial experience of entering "the principle" in a hostile monogamous environment to the collapse of polygamy under prosecution by the federal government in the 1880s and its elimination by the Mormon Church in the 1890s. A brief review cannot begin to convey these documents' richly textured portrayal of the tension and harmony, loneliness and camaraderie polygamy entailed. -VERDICT Though the book is aimed at general readers, professional historians will appreciate -Harline's nuanced use of primary sources. While many titles have been written on the subject, few have made its human face so palpable.-David Azzolina, Univ. of Pennsylvania Libs., Philadelphia (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.