The Polygamous Wives Writing Club

From the Diaries of Mormon Pioneer Women

By: Paula Kelly Harline

Narrated by: Paula Kelly Harline

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints renounced the practice of plural marriage in 1890. In the mid- to late 19th century, however - the heyday of Mormon polygamy - as many as three out of every 10 Mormon women became polygamous wives.

Paula Kelly Harline delves deep into the diaries and autobiographies of 29 such women, providing a rare window into the lives they led and revealing their views and experiences of polygamy, including their well-founded belief that their domestic contributions would help to build a foundation for generations of future Mormons. Polygamous wives were participants in a controversial and very public religious practice that violated most 19th-century social and religious rules of a monogamous America. Harline considers the questions: Were these women content with their sacrifice? Did the benefits of polygamous marriage for the Mormons outweigh the human toll it required and the embarrassment it continues to bring? Polygamous wives faced daunting challenges not only imposed by the wider society but within the home, yet those whose writings Harline explores give voice to far more than unhappiness and discontent. The personal writings of these women, all married to different husbands, are the heart of this remarkable audiobook - they paint a vivid and sometimes disturbing picture of an all but vanished and still controversial way of life.

©2014 Paula Kelly Harline (P)2014 Audible Inc.

Very hard to follow

This could be very interesting, but trying to follow all the different stories was difficult. I wish there would have been more of the original diaries vs. authors interpretation of them. Narration was done by the author and was not great.

Good Variety of Experiences

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

I would recommend this book, but only in the paper or digital format because the performance was so incredibly distracting! The book followed the story of the ups and downs of the Mormon religion fairly well and dove into the lives of the early converts fairly thoroughly, illustrating how they felt clearly for those outside of the religion.

How could the performance have been better?

The reader could have performed like a human being and not a robot so that her performance would have reanimated the lives she was trying to bring to life. If she read something that was meant to be a question, the entire sentence sounded like a question, not just the final phrase/word(s). Her phrasing was horrendous and her performance was stilted; these issues ruined much of the book for me.

Highly recommend. Give it a shot.

After reading some negative reviews, I decided to get this book anyway, and I’m so glad I did.

First off, yes, the way the stories of the women’s lives were told in alternating snippets was confusing. Sometimes just when I thought I knew which woman was which, the author would switch who she was talking about again and my brain wouldn’t hold onto which woman’s story I was in. I do feel like the author should have separated each woman’s story more, absolutely, for clarity and storyline continuity. It felt a little like they were sharing their stories the way they had to share their husbands…

That said, everything else about this book was fantastic, and I would argue that overall, the confusion in the way a few of the stories were told is a minor inconvenience.

Oh, also, some people complained about the narrator. Wait, what…?! I thought this book was beautifully narrated. The reader/author was obviously passionate about the material and I found her very expressive and invested. I recently listened to two other audiobooks about early church history and neither of those readers even bothered to learn the correct pronunciations of some very common LDS names and terms. (Also, reviewers: there are ways to give honest feedback on a book without being just plain mean. Come on, guys.)

Okay, so let me tell you what I really enjoyed about this book. As I mentioned, before this one, I listened to two other books that treated the topic of LDS polygamy.

The first one I listened to was Parley P. Pratt’s autobiography and it hardly seemed to mention women at all, let alone polygamy. He did include a formal essay dedicated to the defense of the practice which seemed to come out of nowhere since in his story I don’t know if he even came right out and said that he practiced polygamy. And it was his kindness toward one of his polygamous wives that ultimately led to his tragic death! I learned a lot from his story about church history, but I was left with a million more questions, especially about the lives of early LDS women.

The next book on LDS polygamy I read (a more popular one) felt cold, clinical, and matter-of-fact about the topic and the people who chose to practice polygamy. That book also got its information from available primary sources like journals and letters. While I found that book very useful and I learned a lot about the earliest days of LDS polygamy and church history from it, I still found it unsatisfying, and not just because of the scant amount of primary sources available about polygamy from those early times: To me, that book felt a little like an outsider’s analysis of the topic, maybe even told from the point of view of someone who found the religious practices of the early saints to be disgusting or distasteful. And I still had so many questions when I finished it.

What was polygamy really like, from the perspective of someone who felt called to live it? How did living, breathing, faithful, earnest people do it, and why? Also, how did polygamy morph and change as the Saints continued to practice it after reaching Utah? Where were the stories of the women? How did they feel about it? It was such a secret at first and so few women wrote about it in the beginning that I was left wanting more.

I also wondered what happened to the unfortunate families who had been told it was asked of them by God for so long and then were suddenly told NOT to do it. I wondered how they felt. I wondered how the lives of the people who practiced polygamy played out in the long term, and how their children were affected. I wondered how the extremely young polygamous wives felt about all of it. I wondered what their daily lives were like. I wondered if anybody ever really enjoyed polygamy. I wondered if it was all a mistake. I wondered if polygamy was just as difficult for the men as it was for the women.

So I decided to go deeper by trying this book. Listening to this book answered some of my questions and gave me new perspectives to consider. And it gave me a much deeper understanding of what those faithful saints were asked to go through and sacrifice at that time. I felt like I could hear the voices of these women across time. Instead of reading a cold, clinical discussion of the practice, I felt like I was hearing from the women themselves and also feeling their devotion and love for the Lord — the REASON for it all — in these stories. Without a vision of the “why,” it might be hard to understand how people could live like this voluntarily.

Nowadays we almost try to pretend that LDS polygamy didn’t happen at all. It’s like this secret that we want to disown, that no one wants to talk about, that we think might just go away if we can manage to bury it deep enough. How does that honor the enormous sacrifices these early saints made? I find power in talking about it and really digging deeply into why such a sacrifice would have been asked of them. Bringing these things out into the open does some justice to their incredibly difficult stories.

I also appreciated some of the general church history that the author included. Her analysis of and personal comments about polygamy helped shape the narrative and suggested some possible reasons for and meaning to polygamy that I might not have thought of on my own. She also didn’t beat around the bush about the fact that polygamy might not have been this empowering, feminist idea that many of us today hope it was for those women as we look back on it now. I found her insights valuable. I also found her treatment of the individuals in the book to be nuanced and nonjudgmental.

Today there are also some incredibly difficult things that members of the LDS church go through to keep their covenants. Some saints today might maintain a lifestyle that feels foreign to their natural inclinations because they feel called to do so as they strengthen their personal relationship with God, just like the early polygamous saints did.

I think there is power and strength in reading stories like those in this book. They help shape and define our collective identity and help us remember our religious heritage, whether or not we personally have polygamous ancestors. Life was hard back then, it’s hard now, God asks us to do hard things that strengthen us, and we can tell our stories so that others can try to understand what we have gone through.

This book was excellent and I recommend it.

Very interesting!

I'm no Mormon. But, the reality and grit of this pioneer women's stories are not to be put down. Loved it.

Great stories of early Mormonism!

This a great and detailed account of the many beautiful and tragic filled lives of early mormon settlers as they transitioned from polygamy back to monogamy marriage. It's an inside look of the real attitudes and perspectives from early Mormon women who lived it all. I strongly recommend this book to anyone seeking greater historical knowledge and understanding of early Mormonism, even if your area of interest isn't religious or polygamy related as mine is not. Awesome narration too!

Couldn't Finish It

What would have made The Polygamous Wives Writing Club better?

The narrator was difficult to listen to. Too rigid, making it difficult to follow.

Has The Polygamous Wives Writing Club turned you off from other books in this genre?

No

What didn’t you like about Paula Kelly Harline’s performance?

Not much. She talked too slow and was very rigid.

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

No

Any additional comments?

N/A