Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist's Wife Reviews

• Reviewed by Barb Radmore

  
  By A299L0XDG92LMP on 2007-08-22
  Shattered Dreams is a fascinating look at a way of life totally foreign to most people. Irene Spencer grew up in the branch of the Mormon faith that still believed in polygamy. The second of what was ultimately her husband's ten wives, she became the mother of thirteen of his 58 children. The statistics are important as they show the unimaginable situation in which Irene Spencer spend much of her life.
  
  This book is a brutally honest memoir of a woman' life. It follows her from place to place, never enough money, rarely in a finished house, living in abject poverty. She loves her husband but is able to spend very little time with him. He is spread too thin trying to meet the needs of both his large family and his church. She yearns for romance and affection, neither of which have a place in the religion she embraces. Her husband rarely sees his children- hard to spend quality time with 58 children. She helps her "sister wives" with their children in an extended system of family and obligations.
  
  Shattered Dreams is a glimpse into the incredible life of one woman. She is able to take the reader through the many journeys, locations and situations in which she found herself. Her ability to look back on the emotions she suffered and share them is a gift she shares thoughtfully and clearly. It is an emotional tale but told without self pity, without holding back on any part of it.
  
  It has basic background on the church, its history and turbulence as it affects her life. A follow up to this memoir would be most welcomed to expand on the Mormon Church and the events that are mentioned in this book. Irene Spencer's ability to handle concrete details along with a descriptive voice would make her an ideal author to examine and share more information on this subject.
  
  
  
  

• A New Look at an Old Way of Life

  
  By A2BPFPVOWCTKDJ on 2007-08-22
  This is an amazing story, which reads like fiction, although it's not. Irene's real life experiences are hard for many of us to comprehend. Religious principles that promote polygamy as Godly seems alien in the land of the free and the brave. Although now illegal in the US, it's likely that in remote parts of the US, Mexico and elsewhere, young woman are still being indoctrinated in this way. Our author was one of them.
  
  Irene's courage in living this life and then leaving it, is admirable, and the close-up look at fundamental Mormonism this book provides, is a real eye-opener. The reader will feel sympathy, and admiration for this young woman in her struggle to do the right thing. The author reveals to us through this wonderful book, the struggles she endured to get free of the marriage and lifestyle that she felt was wrong. She also shared the aspects of Mormon polygamy that are often overlooked: abject poverty as a result of too many mouths to feed, lack of privacy, abjegation of self, and the continuing indoctrination of female children, and the overall effects of these things on the family dynamic.
  
  I found that Irene's perspective on polygamy and monogamy, having lived in both, and her commentary on this subject is really interesting, particularly to those of us who have only been involved in monogamous relationships.
  
  This is an unusual book on Mormon polygamy written by someone who's experienced it, and despite the author's experiences and struggles to leave that lifestyle, she writes compassionately of the church, her former family members and the experience. This is a wonderful book that is highly recommended.
  
  
  

• Shattered Dreams: Truth More Riveting than Fiction

  
  By AXDKV7MSLN89 on 2007-08-22
  Irene Spencer, in her first book Shattered Dreams, speaks boldly from the heart of a woman oppressed by a patriarchal religious cult and powerfully bares her life of loneliness, longing and determination to overcome.
  
  Her story chronicles the severe pain of sharing a husband with nine other wives all vying for her husband's attention and affection. She lived in abject poverty in the Mexican desert, raising 13 of her husband's 58 children, often without running water or electricity.
  
  Shattered Dreams reads like a page-turner novel and finishes strong. I quickly found myself cheering for Irene as she overcame each obstacle and bravely chose to take control of her life.
  
  
  
  

• A first-rate family history from inside a fundamentalist polygamous sect

  
  By A2EBLL2OYEQJN9 on 2008-02-05
  Shattered Dreams is the autobiography of Irene Spencer, a woman raised in a fundamentalist polygamous sect of the Mormon faith. Irene was raised to honor the Principle (of plural marriage and reverence for the sect leader) to achieve eternal salvation. Despite her own mother abandoning the Principle, and despite a suitor who promised Irene a monogamous, mainstream lifestyle in the LDS church, Irene married a polygamous man in 1953 at the age of just 16. From girlhood through motherhood, Irene grappled with her own mortal desires to have a husband all to herself, to bear only as many children as she could afford, and to achieve stability and financial security. As a member of a polygamous sect, Irene prayed to banish these selfish desires and worked to obey her husband's desire for a kingdom of seven (or more) wives, which would ensure him godhood in his faith.
  
  Polygamy is punishable by ex-communication from the LDS church, so Irene's marriage was a secret from her closest friends and family members until her husband moved Irene and his first wife, Charlotte, to rural Mexico, where they could avoid both LDS scrutiny and the law of the U.S. With their husband Verlan, Irene and her nine sister wives moved across Mexico and South America in search of farming and business ventures that would ensure their survival. She lived in unfinished homes without running water or electricity for most of her life, but she formed a community with the local Mexicans, sharing U.S. surplus clothing and blankets as well as food. Irene even adopted a local abandoned baby who was turned out by the family patriarch. Her stories are humorous and heart-warming, despite the fact that in reality, her family was constantly at the edge of survival. Irene is a terrific storyteller who often ends a chapter with a zinger of a punch-line.
  
  From the title of this book, I expected to read more ruminations on the "shattering" of dreams. Irene's story is no tell-all expose against polygamy. She left the lifestyle after she was widowed, and she has lived in monogamy for the last two decades, but she does not crusade against her former sect. Irene has instead chosen to share the story of a wife and mother struggling to find balance and contentment in life. The reader is left to draw his or her own conclusions from Irene's life of poverty and personal sacrifice. The author does mention inter-sect murders and power struggles, but only in passing, because she was consumed with much more immediate pressures to feed and clothe her thirteen children. Later in her marriage, when her husband courted a new teenaged wife (a girl of only 14 years who was friends with Irene's oldest daughter!), Irene questioned him outright about the girl's suitability for marriage, but finally conceded to her husband's desires and blessed the marriage.
  
  Irene Spencer has written a first-rate family history for her legacy of children and grandchildren (most of whom chose not to live in the Principle). This is a powerful glimpse inside a life that is alien to most Americans.
  
  

• A page turner from start to finish...

  
  By AS3ZZ8MVYK07M on 2007-09-04
  I grew up in Utah as a non-Mormon. I had always believed that the fundamentalist Mormons were a sick, twisted cult that thrived on child molestation and sex. After reading Shattered Dreams, I see that many of these people were living a life of sacrifice for what they truly believe in. I do not believe in Pologamy or Mormonism 'fundalmentalist or otherwise', but I do understand their plight a great deal more. I have a mountain of respect for Irene and what she endured and sacrificed for 28 years of her life. I could not say that I could be as true to, and as passionate about my religious beliefs, to endure a life of poverty, disease, lonliness, neglect, depression, filth - the list goes on and on. I would have left that life LONG, LONG before Irene finally did!! Personally, I found the book very inspirational. When I think about the way that Irene and her children lived, and how other plural wives are living their lives today, my worries and problems seem almost trivial. This was a great read. Highly recommended!
  
  
  
  
• heart wrenching and thought provoking memoir
  By AFVQZQ8PW0L on 2007-08-25
  Irene Spencer was raised in Short Creek, Arizona to adhere to the secretly applied but outlawed salvation "Principle" of some Mormon splinter fundamentalists. Thus in 1953 sixteen years old Irene, the daughter of a second wife, married her already married brother-in-law Verlan LeBaron. The teen became his second wife although her mother warned her that polygamy means poverty; but to Irene she learned all her life that salvation for women can only occur through marriage. Over the years as they fled to Mexico, Verlan had nine wives and fifty-six children; all living in abject poverty. After almost three decades of polygamy, Spencer has lived the last two decades in a monogamous relationship.
  
  SHATTERED DREAMS will rip the guts of the reader as Irene Spencer's story is compelling and shocking. The audience will self reflect on their religious education seeking abuses as this memoir is heart wrenching and thought provoking.
  
  Harriet Klausner
  
  
  
• Disappointing...
  By A1CNI1I1MNZY7Y on 2007-09-29
  The story and window into the polygamous life was fascinating, but for me the writing was lacking. I ended up skimming the last 1/4 of the book. It just started feeling like it went on and on. On one hand this WAS the writers life, and that was the point - for her the story was more of the same for years and endless years, her husband taking more and more wives, more kids being born, more poverty, more moves, more loneliness, more suffering, continued depression...so in that sense it conveyed her life well.
  
  But that does not necessarily make good reading.
  
  With ten wives and 58 children I did not need to hear about every birth, every wedding, every move --- and I just felt the writing itself was lacking in soul. So it fell a bit flat and I felt very little emotion or connection with the writer. What made it interesting was that we don't ever get to see into this world. So if you're looking for some insight into the polygamous lifestyle by all means read it, but if you expect great writing you may be disappointed.
  Still, I applaud the writer for speaking out and having the courage to make her story public and it is a rare account of a very secretive and private world.
  
  
• Distasteful, and not because of the topic
  By A1S7T19K12159Z on 2007-11-02
  Polygamy, abject poverty, fundamentalist Mormonism....what could be more fascinating? Like many, I was curious to read more after becoming a fan of "Big Love" on HBO, and after reading Jon Krakauer's "Under The Banner of Heaven". And this author's story seemed compelling. What makes the book wholly unpleasant is her seeming need to dwell on details of bodily functions, the fluids expelled in human illnesses, and other such delights, none of which is remotely necessary to the story. Layered on top of that is a seeming disregard for the reader's curiosity. One example: Her baby was in his crib, she was outside, she had a premonition he was in danger, and he was found shortly thereafter in a drainage ditch. How did he get there? We never find out. Another example: her friend has an abcess, goes to the doctor for a routine treatment (which treatment is described in stomach-turning detail), and the friend dies on the table in the doctor's office in front of the author. What was the cause of death? We are not told. We know how much fluid was expelled from the poor woman's body, but we do not know why she died. Anyway, that is the kind of book this is. I finished it, but felt soiled when I was done, and didn't feel like I had learned much of anything.
  
  
• A look at the book as a link to other fundamentalist faiths
  By A1OCU239ASQBBS on 2007-09-10
  I agree with all prior comments. Irene Spencer's narrative flows as if she were a guest in your own parlor. She is factual without seeking self-pity. And as your jaw drops at some of her statements you find yourself wondering if in her situation..YOU could be so compassionate and forgiving! It's a refreshing read, atypical in lacking the seething, get- even anger of too many women's books.In this well balanced assessment of her life she extends love and understanding to most all caught up in world of Mormon fundamentalism.
  .I would add...I couldn't help but see a similarity between her experience and that of many "sisters" caught in , polygamous or not,other fanatical fundamentalist religions burgeoning today. They all have in common male domination through prohibition of higher education for females,enforced obedience through brainwashing techniques involving fear and guilt, and above all...the proverbial "barefoot and pregnant"...usually quite literally!!
  What I have come to realize, and this biography well dramatizes that fact,fanatical fundamentalism of WHATEVER persuasion always backfires because the very nature of its extreme rigidity becomes as constraining to the male as to the female he seeks to control!
  Kudoes to this tremendous woman for her survival with sanity in tact and I look forward to part two!!!
  
  
• A Sheep's Dream Is Shattered
  By A3O46UE3NGGO19 on 2007-12-14
  My mom knew the "Crazy" (as they were referred to) LeBaron clan being raised in the Mormon Colonies in Mexico and Dr. Hatch's sav was slathered on my wounds as a child. Consequently, I was very interested to read this book as I felt familiar with the characters. In the beginning I was absorbed by the topic of polygamy, with all of its mystery and stigma, but that curiosity wore off. The details of the family's poverty and plight were exhausting and after a while, I didn't care. By the end of the book I had no sympathy for this woman who took little responsibility for her choices. Throughout the book she tries to convince the reader that she was of strong character, remarkable will, but if she truly were, she would have left the clan and stood up for herself. Hardly a heroine, Irene was pathetic because she chose plural marriage as the fast-track, easy route to heaven. What's more, she really didn't understand the gospel she supposedly was following and the epilogue proves that. It doesn't seem that she ever attempted to learn the truth of Mormonism, but instead believed anything she was told, every falsehood. As a Mormon, I found that the most offensive aspect: her sheeplike character.
  
  
• Where have all the editors gone...?
  By ASPABROV8R7M5 on 2008-01-04
  Let me first say that I do not know any of the people mentioned in this book nor am I a Mormon. Perhaps if I did or was I would have thought more of this book...?
  
  This book was a book club choice and I was very curious to read about Irene Spencer's life as a plural wife.
  
  I think that her story was interesting certainly, and I do believe that what she wrote was really what she experienced but when telling a story like this there should be some editing...sadly, there was very little here.
  
  The reader is told about Irene's life, the many babies and almost as many moves to various new locations with all the babies. At some point the poverty and anguish become redundant and lose their importance in the telling of this story. Less really IS more sometimes.
  
  And so I wondered...where have all the editors gone?
  
  This was one of those books that had it been told a bit differently it could have been very good...but it wasn't. Though I'm certain we will have lots to talk about at our book club meeting.
  
  I think the title Shattered Dreams was rather misleading. It didn't seem to me that Irene Spencer's dreams were shattered at all. She seemed to be doing what she thought she should and doing it over and over and over again hoping for a different result.
  
  I also thought that she would be writing the story with a bit of perspective having left that life but she doesn't offer much in the way of insight. There seemed to be an excessive focus on Irene's unfulfilled sexual desire, again sometimes less is more...
  
  Overall, I was disappointed with the book, I can not recommend it to anyone unless there are no other choices on the topic. It was way too much of the same thing over and over again with little or no insight from the author.
  
  
  
• A "Must Read" Book About Polygamy
  By A3Q3A8MZOXQR1A on 2007-09-12
  I just finished reading this book yesterday evening and was anxious to come here and sing its praises. However, the other reviewers have beat me to it! Therefore, I wholeheartedly endorse what's already been written.
  
  One thing I want to add to what has already been written: This is the first honest book on polygamy that I've ever read. If you need to understand polygamy for whatever reason, please do yourself a favor and read this book!
  
  
  
• We Live With Our Choices
  By ABC9XP9W5KJBW on 2007-09-21
  You will FEEL shattered as you finish this book. There is no other way to feel about this sweet, caring, intelligent young girl who was victimized both by an insane religion (redundant?) and by the backward times in which she happened to be born. Irene Spencer was much too bright for her own good, yet still could not escape her miserable fate: wife of a Mormon polygamist. She seemed to be living two separate lives all through this book. She endured the physical hardships of her bodily life (raising 13 children in dire poverty) and she suffered the endless questions which tortured her constantly in her ever-active mind. Woe to intelligent women born to deeply religious families because always there is the pull of the people you love, even when you have your darkest hours of doubt and despair about the beliefs you are supposed to mindlessly embrace. What a gritty woman! I am in awe of Irene Spencer and her raw determination to carve out the life she had always envisioned for herself, at last. She has crafted a fabulous, heartening book.
  
  
• Insight Into A Different Way Of Life
  By A34BWLZ9HERHGM on 2007-10-29
  There seems to be quite a glut recently of books written by plural wives who have left the FLDS (Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints) and their polygamous husbands. Their way of life is very foreign to most of us, and from what I understand, there is currently a show on TV depicting some sort of Hollywoodized version of plural marriage.
  
  Irene Spencer, unlike some of the other books I've glanced through, tells her story simply and honestly and attempts to impart to the reader an understanding of what and why she lived the way she did. She doesn't make her polygamous husband, Verlan LeBaron, out to be a monster or some terrifying persona. (Though, at times he does seem a jerk!) She was his wife and she loved him. She bore 13 of his children. She became his 2nd wife willingly.
  
  Irene's honesty and acceptance of the choices she made in her life is what makes this book delightful to read. At times one has to wonder, especially as she battles with jealousy. Yet, hey, she is being honest here. She is baring her life - warts and all - and not all of it shows her in the best light.
  
  When I finished the book, I had a good deal of admiration for this woman. Her life is very different from mine, but she is a survivor. She has probably had more sorrow than happiness, especially in her younger years. Yet, she seems to have no bitterness, and treats all she meets with kindness. I sincerely hope she has achieved happiness now.
  
  I enjoyed the time I spent with Irene and her family. She allowed me to glimpse a life I probably will never understand, but I am glad she found the courage to share it.
  
  
• Wow! What a story!
  By A1YZ3IJXI2J119 on 2007-10-04
  Reviewed by Irene Watson for Reader Views (9/07)
  
  Irene Spencer is commended and praised for exposing her years as a polygamist's wife knowing that her life could be at risk. This touching account of growing up and participating in fundamentalist Mormon faith shows how she crossed many boundaries which bring the reader to places of sadness, hope, and in many instances, laughter.
  
  Spencer, a product of a plural marriage, at age 16 entered into a plural marriage with her half-sister to Verlan LeBaron. She was in love with a non-fundamentalist and dreamed of marrying him; however, because of the beliefs imposed on her by the community and leaders of the church, she feared she would be denying God's calling if she married him. Against her better judgment and feelings, she succumbed to being the second wife of her brother-in-law.
  
  Shortly after the marriage, a Mormon village in Arizona was invaded by government officials. Fearing the same would happen in Utah, Verlan LeBaron, with his two wives, fled to the LeBaron family ranch in Mexico.
  
  Spencer writes about her life in the Mexican desert with the LeBaron family, her existence without appropriate food, shelter, water, or electricity. Her husband was continually moving the family around, cramming the wives and children into small quarters. The homes had no amenities, sometimes not even a cook stove. Clothing was either hand-me-down or purchased at a thrift store.
  
  Surviving the ordeals and mothering fourteen children, Spencer eventually left the cult. Her story gives accounts of her life as a wife in a plural marriage and her survival skills. However, there is more. Her story also gives faith and inspiration to anyone that feels they are "stuck" in a situation they are not able to get out of. Spencer, uneducated and unskilled, shows how she was able to leave the fundamentalist beliefs, and seek freedom and independence. She accomplished something many of us strive for - knowledge that we do have a choice.
  
  While reading "Shattered Dreams" I found it hard to put down. Spencer's writing style and skill brings the reader smack into her life. I was feeling the emotions that she had and often rooted for her when she stood up for herself against her husband's emotional incest.
  
  An extremely good read. Not much wonder Spencer's story made The New York Times best sellers list!
  
  
  
  
• I didn't want to put it down!
  By AVCG1FKWAB17H on 2007-12-24
  I read this book very quickly as I was interested in how the main character, Irene, quit being a plural wife. I'm not giving away any big secret there, because if you read the author's biography, you can see that she is married to someone else.
  
  There have been articles about polygamy in the papers and it spiked my interest in what kind of life this was for a wife and her family. I envisioned the father being a rather successful person and each wife having their own house.
  
  That's not the case in Irene's situation. She had to endure poverty as well as sharing a house with the other wives. The story is told through Irene's eyes, but it would have been interesting to see how the children dealt with all of this.
  
  I thought the descriptions were very vivid and it made it easy to put myself in Irene's secondhand shoes. I was glad when I closed the book and exited back to my world!
  
  One item I didn't like in the book were the premonitions that occurred. In several instances Irene or someone else would say that something was going to happen and it did. I can see that happening once or maybe even twice, but it was more than that which made me wonder about the credibility of other things in the book.
  
  I think this would make a great read for a book club. There are several points to discuss and it might bring up some controversy! Those are always good discussions!
  
  
• Beautiful Memoir of a Bizarre Life
  By A2PHZ1RZ50SR89 on 2007-09-22
  I loved this book. I saw a review of it in the local newspaper and knew I had to read it. When I received it in the mail, I thought, "What was I thinking? This could be a horrible, grotesque book that I end up hating." But it's not, and I don't.
  
  The story is that of a young girl blinded by her own indoctrination and mislead as she struggles in a search for what is truth. The story is both crushingly more terrible and encouragingly more hopeful than I had expected. The absolute poverty - physical, emotional, sexual, social, and spiritual - through which this woman lived, striving continually to bless those around her and be a faithful wife, hating and yet laughing at the ridiculousness of it all... well, you just can't help but have your heart go out to her.
  
  Like others, I have detested the practice of polygamy, yet as I read this book, I could not help but sympathize with those like Irene who simply were/are entrenched in it. There may be some who would not like it for the sheer length of the depressing days and months and years that Irene spends hoping, trying, striving, somehow surviving a terrible living situation. But the very humanness of her story, and the realness of her sincere desires to be all that she is meant to be... well, it is definitely worth reading. I was appalled and indignant continually in this story, laughing at some of her antics even as I wished I could be there to comfort her in her ceaseless hardships. Through it all there runs a small voice of truth that there is One who will see her through it and meet her at the end. It is not a dirty story; it is one of a woman striving to live purely, and in the end, realizing that there is One who desires to love her not for the sacrifices she has made, but for the sacrifice He has already made for her.
  
  This book might not be for everyone. But I am so glad that I bought it, and I am so glad to have read it. It is rather emotionally draining, but it will also make you incredibly grateful for not sharing your spouse!! I cried with joy for this woman who at last knows what it is to be truly loved, but without having to work for it and fear losing it.
  
  
• Shattered Dreams: A Beautiful, Well-Written Book
  By A3B5RH9RSMN7XN on 2007-10-17
  As an former LDS woman myself who was raised in the LDS church, this book was edifying to me to read stories of women who escaped the brainwashing that the church (both LDS and FLDS) did and still does, particularly to women. This book had real-life stories of the struggle and hardship of practicing polygamy in the modern world. It was funny, honest, horrifying and sad all at the same time, what a beautifully written piece of text. If you want to read a book that will inspire you to understand polygamy better and why people stay in it for so long, THIS is the book for you to read. I am so proud of Irene Spencer (the author) for being brave enough to share her story. Her story was the BEST presentation of the true roots of Mormonism that I have ever read. As a former Mormon, who is not interested in slandering the church, but rather just telling the truth, I can tell you: this book will tell you everything you've ever wanted to know about the real hardships that Fundamentalist and regular mormon women have to face. I think modern day practicing LDS members would enjoy reading this just as much as any non-mormon or ex-mormon. This book is not written to slam the LDS church and it doesn't,it just tells of Irene's life story as a polygamist's wife.
  
  
  
• entertaining, but could be annoying
  By A3BICMXKXBA5J4 on 2007-10-28
  I got the book on the recommendation of People Magazine. I thought the story was interesting and the author's ability to make lemonade out of well, apples basically, was incredible. However, the author repeats herself a lot in the book, unnecessarily explaining her feelings of loneliness and jealousy over and over again, and not in new ways. I wanted to tell her - "I GOT you are jealous, now on with the story already."
  
  If you want something quick and you are wondering what life as a Polygamist's wife is like, then this is your book. Just don't expect incredible depth into the Human Soul. The author's bitterness through most of her life didn't allow for much personal insight - only until she left the sect at the very end of the book.
  
  
• Answers All Your Questions About Polygamy
  By A3BGJ90ZRXGRWJ on 2007-09-23
  I've wondered for a long time (1) how women in polygamy could endure it, (2) how men could marry multiple wives when it's illegal, and (3) why anyone would even want to live that way, in the first place.
  
  Irene's beautiful, heart-wrenching story answers all these questions, and more. Finally, I understand the fundamentalist Mormon viewpoint and lifestyle. It's a stunning story, and one I'm grateful she had the courage to share.
  
  If I could give this book 10 stars, I would. This is a memoir, but it's much more than that--it's a lesson in living and loving and in finding spirituality and God.
  
  I can't recommend it highly enough. God bless you, dear Irene Spencer. Thank you for writing your story.
  
  -- Carolyn Warren
  
  
  
• Fascinating portrait of polygamy
  By A2VG0RY3EUWZKB on 2007-11-03
  At age 16, pretty, vivacious Irene Spencer gave up the man she loved to marry Verlan LeBaron, who already had a wife and child.
  
  In fact, LeBaron's wife, Charlotte, was Irene's half sister. Irene and Charlotte weren't particularly close, however. Irene was the 13th of 31 children in her fundamentalist Mormon family.
  
  Irene was born in 1937 into a fifth-generation polygamous family. They subscribed to the "Celestial Law" (commonly called "the Principle"), handed down from the original Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, which held that future glory would be attained by having as many wives and children as possible.
  
  These fundamentalists believe that Adam was given earth "as a reward for his own obedience to the Celestial Law on some other world....Earth was to be his domain, and the wives and children he acquired on that other world were to help him populate this one, which he would then rule over as God the Father."
  
  Jesus was Adam's first born in the preexistence, and thereby chosen to be the second of the holy Trinity. "When Jesus returns to resurrect the dead, he will exalt to the highest level of celestial glory all male children of the covenant who have succeeded well in living the Principle. They will become gods of their own worlds." Their wives and children will help in populating his new world.
  
  So, of course, to be born into the Principle is to be one of the Chosen. From earliest childhood Irene had been taught that she would reap her rewards in the afterlife. On earth her duty was to marry a godly man, assist him in marrying other women, and have as many children as possible. Unmarried and monogamous women would be forever childless in the afterlife, servants to the gods. Or else they would pass eternity in hell.
  
  So, equipped with a ninth-grade education and a heritage of submission, Irene rejected love and monogamy and married ambitious Verlan, who adhered fiercely to the Principle, including "the law of purity," which allowed sex solely for procreation. Irene, a sensual person, found the physical deprivation almost as wrenching as the loneliness. But this was nothing to what was to come.
  
  Eventually Verlan would acquire 10 wives and 50-something children. They lived in a polygamous colony mostly in Mexico, while Verlan worked in California and was absent for long stretches. How so many children survived is a mystery.
  
  The poverty was beyond abject. Her first home was a rat-infested adobe hut with no electricity, heat or running water, save a pump out front. Little did she know how good she had it. Over the years she lived with two wives and 21 children in a three room house with dirt floors and one bathroom, ate ground wheat and beans, considered margarine a luxury, owned a flour sack dress and no maternity clothes, washed uncountable diapers by hand and de-wormed her children in an ill-fated sojourn in Nicaragua.
  
  They moved often, sometimes for economic ventures (mostly failed), and sometimes to escape murderous internecine battles.
  
  Sometimes there was a washing machine and electricity, and occasionally there were second hand toys for the children, but the grinding poverty seldom lifted for long. Verlan was always eager to add another wife for his eternal glory and as he became more prominent in the church women requested his hand in marriage.
  
  The reader knows from the beginning that Irene eventually finds monogamy and happiness. Her amazing story of work and poverty and loss and loneliness, the bouts of jealousy among all the wives, and the struggle to submit to a life of misery and denigration is wrenching and astounding. She thinks often of leaving, especially at the beginning, but at one child a year (who would belong to her husband if she left) she has little time to think of anything.
  
  Her zest for life and pride in her organizational competence - she was much relied upon - keep her going, along with her deep-seated religious beliefs. Despite the many tears, her sense of humor - sometimes wry - animates her story. "While we traveled, those fortunate enough to get carsick were allowed to sit in the front of the truck."
  
  This intense and dramatic memoir will be of interest to anyone who wonders what polygamy is really like; how fundamentalist religious beliefs dictate behavior and keep their followers separate from society; and how strength of character can overcome tremendous odds.
  
  
• It is well written, it's as if you were her friend listening to her life.
  By A32V5XXXFBBU8W on 2008-03-15
  This book helped me immeasuabley. I was not in a polygamist relationship, but one where I continually found evidence of my husband's other women. Living with a cheater for years and years is much like living with a polygamist, but it's done in a clandestine fashion. Her book spells out the misery you live when with a constantly adulterous spouse. The strange illnesses, from his secret liasons with women with VD, the poverty, because the money is spent on himself and other women. The neglect of his household responsiblities because all his time is going to other women, his children who barely know him, because he rarely spends time with them. It is the same scenario, just a different setting. It too was married at 15, and at 15 I felt more like a 60 year old with all the heightened scene of the desperation of an ugly life that never got better, even though I tried for thirty years. All it did was infect my sons with his ugly misogynist attitudes. Her book was more honest about the emotional pain than I would ever have had the courage to convey.
  For putting her agony into words, she has done an oustanding service for women who live in the same desperate void of an endless black hole. I am so happy that she found love from a good man, she certainly deserves this.
  
  
• Shattered Dreams
  By AYTBMF1E3EAOK on 2007-09-29
  This book was written by the "sister wife" of the author of "His Favorite Wife." It's a view into the strange world of cult polygamy. You must read both books, two different views of women married to the same man--a man who had ten wives and neglected them all along with his 40+ children. I couldn't put the book down.
  
  
• Polygamy is a cult of poverty and oppresion
  By A15OZQMNHGR3ZQ on 2007-10-07
  I was always interested in Mormons because they seemed to be industrious, focused, and rarely criminal. Just what we'd like Americans to be. But I was horribly disappointed to find that the fundamentalist Mormons (who continue polygamy after it was outlawed by the Mormon church and federal laws) seem to be completly selfish in their quest to becomes gods and goddesses, at the expense of their families. Polygramy is poverty, Irene Spencer proves in her book. Those who aim for 7 marriages and 50 children get poorer every year. You'd think (hope) that polygamy would be about sex, but it doesn't seem to be -- at least, not about good sex. I couldn't put this book down: Spencer is such a fine writer, able to put sincerity into words, at times with great humor. One of my favorite books of the year.
  
  
• Tough Woman Always Gives IN
  By A2D613DR7MQMMK on 2008-04-10
  How many times can one read that this woman was a person seen by others (and herself) as being fiesty, tough etc, and then reading over and over how she had given in to endless flattery and promises. She never won a major battle.
  
  Hard to get through...A better editing job might have helped.
  
  
• Excellent book!
  By A10B300M8YDU4Z on 2007-09-16
  You could actually feel her pain and suffer with her. The emotions she talked about are normal. I have never believed those plural wives that say they are not jealous.
  
  
• some confusion
  By A9J1I1RGZXNRL on 2007-11-01
  I really wish people wouldn't assosiate Poligamists with Mormons. They are two totally differnt groups.
  
  
• honest and brutal
  By A3OELD8YILF8JH on 2008-01-24
  I read this book first, before Reading her sister wife's ( Susan Ray Schmidts) book, and im glad i did. Irene is brutally honest, graphic ( Too graphic it seems for some of these reviewer's) , but that was the life she lived. Completely. I guess if you had lived through extreme poverty, bore 14 children, shared your husband with 10 wives you might not want to skip any of it either.
  She certainly does not make herself out to be a saint , and gleefully tells us of her feelings of jealousy, ( a lot) and her sense of humor which was more anger really when directed at her sister wives and she doesn't give excuses , she simply explains why she believed what she believed and you can absolutely sense the genuine emotion she had for her husband, her friends, her children and people in general.
  Call her whatever you want; this is a woman who for her own core beliefs stayed in a marriage and situation that would have killed a lesser person. No, i don't believe she's weaker for staying, leaving would have been easier than what that woman lived through for the sake of belief.
  My god she even adopts a poorer child while she can barely feed her own!!!!!
  She was just a human being, very very human , who was raised in a faith most of us cant understand and it took her a very long time to get out .
  How many of us cant say the same thing about some of our outdated beliefs we learned as children and aren't even aware of?
  Its hard to believe there are people out here blasting her for staying but totally ignoring "who" she was, and how many people she helped and loved along the way.
  Polygamy is brutal. Even if the financial situation was better the author makes it very clear how the emotional strain of it becomes unbearable but added with the complete disregard these "husbands" have for the families they make then move on from , its NOT HBO, its NOT even TV.
  
  
• Interesting story, but a little long....
  By A3GU7YQ7ENO3EN on 2007-09-30
  I had just finished His Favorite Wife when I read this account of the same family from a different "sister-wife". The story is interesting, but not as well written as His Favorite Wife. Still, I enjoyed reading another wife's view of their tragic lives. God bless both of these women and I am so glad the were able to escape this lifestyle.
  
  
• A good reason to enforce polygomy laws
  By A1KLDBQC3RIDW9 on 2007-10-01
  As much as I believe in a live-and-let-live philosophy, this book pretty much proves that people have to be protected from cults like the one Irene was brought up in. She and everyone in her family were brainwashed into believing that they would not get into heaven unless they entered into "The Principle" of polygamous marriage. If not for the love of a mother like Irene, I can't see how children turn out okay after living in the poverty and other difficult circumstances that polygamy has placed them in . Ignorance is not bliss, and this book proves it. I applaud the author for writing this book. No, it's not great writing, but it's better than many popular books today. The repetitiveness of the story mirrors her life and in that way, is necessary to her story.
  
  

• His Favorite Wife: Trapped in Polygamy
• Escape
• Away: A Novel
• Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs
• God's Brothel: The Extortion of Sex for Salvation in Contemporary Mormon and Christian Fundamentalist Polygamy and the Stories of 18 Women Who Escaped