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Rating: 
Summary: read this book
Review: Dorothy Allred Solomon has created a work of extraordinary beauty and insight. Her description of the trials and tribulations, but also the joys, of being raised in a family that adheres to the early Mormon practice of plural marriage is one of the most powerful explorations of family and gender relations I have ever read.
This book has particular personal meaning for me because I grew up knowing many descendants and relatives of Rulon Allred, the author's father and the patriarch around whom her family and religious upbringing were based. Solomon achieves something that I think many readers will struggle to understand: she writes about her life in polygamy without trying to force a simplistic moral judgment onto her father and his legacy. Although she herself has abandoned polygamy and expresses many criticisms of its effects on those around her, especially its effects on women, she also holds many loving and happy memories and refuses to issue a blanket condemnation of her upbringing.
As an outsider looking in at friends and acquaintances who live in this same faith community, I have also (albeit to a much smaller extent) experienced Solomon's struggle between the desire to criticize Rulon Allred's form of polygamy for its often negative effects on those who live it and the desire to protect and defend its practitioners from the equally hurtful judgments and intolerance forced upon them by a hostile and even hateful outside world, a world that mocks and refuses to acknowledge any virtue in a lifestyle emphasizing the bonds of faith and family.
As she explores this tension between condemnation and affirmation of her past, her father, and her religion, Solomon offers readers a glimpse into an intensely personal world of doubt, pain, jealousy, and above all love. Her work allows us to judge that world, but demands that we understand it as well.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating look into a fringe society
Review: Dorothy Allred Solomon's honest, telling account of growing up in a fundamentalist Mormon family is both intriguing and disturbing. She pieces together a detailed family history from genealogical records and firsthand journals, careful to include and identify sometimes alarming behavior and inconsistencies in all of them, and offers an insight into what it was like growing up in a polygamist family as one of 48 children born to a naturopathic physician and his seven wives. At the center of this sprawling clan is her father, Rulon Allred, a complicated man whose single-minded devotion to living the "Principle of Plural Marriage" binds the family together, tears them apart, and ultimately leads to his demise.What is remarkable about Allred Solomon's writing is that although she includes her comments and opinions, she steers clear of turning her fringe-society family into a cast of caricatures or one-dimensional religious zealots. While she obviously disagrees with polygamy--a belief she began to form at a very early age--she does not condemn those who practice it out of hand. (But she does express disgust at the sight of much older men sizing up young girls as prospective wives.) However, she is careful to include the devastating affects polygamous marriages have on those who enter into or result from them. Her own mother (her father's fourth wife, and twin sister of his third) suffered numerous nervous breakdowns, which Allred Solomon seems to attribute to her despair over sharing her husband with six other women, her "sisterwives" who, along with the children, refer to their husband as "Daddy." And while her father urges all of his children to "remember who they are," Allred Solomon struggles to figure out who she is in the first place, as someone who does not even possess a birth certificate, since registering her birth would have exposed her father's bigamy. Ultimately, the book is one woman's search to find her own identity, and in doing so, she offers us a window into a bizarre and often misunderstood community.
Rating: 
Summary: Unoraganized & Boring
Review: I didn't grow up in, or around polygamy (thank goodness), but I am interested in what compells women to chose a polygamist lifestyle. (Because, frankly- yuck!) This book didn't enlighten my quest for understanding. It was terribly unorganized! The chapter's bounced around from past, to present, to family members the reader had previously gotten to know,to random fourth sister-wive's (creepy term)third grandaughter, never previously mentioned. I didn't care about any of the people, except for some of the sad, sad women who were sucked into the 'lifestyle' by naive choice mixed with force. Making things even worse, the book was so dreadfully boring most of the way through- the history of the Mormon's fleeing to Mexico was confusing, (so many wives to keep track of) & tedious. What does Solomon really think about the polygamist lifestyle? She chose not to stay within it- but her thoughts on it are as riddled as the messy narrative. I gave it two stars, instead of one, because I do admire her bravery- I'm sure she angered a huge amount of her brethren. Overall, the book made me feel creepy, sad, and bored. I don't recommend it.
Rating: 
Summary: I agree with "Rosy Memories"
Review: I thought the book was disappointing. She is a good writer but the overwhelming whitewash of her father was a turn-off. The focus of the book seemed to be simply the surface of her life and the surface of the religion, and near the end I started skipping pages to get to something interesting. I really didn't understand if she wanted sympathy for this lifestyle or was trying to explain it.
Her fathers wives certainly needed sympathy, but I could find no real hardship in her growing up despite her whining about not getting enough attention from her dad.Unfortunately I know too many folks whose childhood would make hers look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm to have any sympathy for her at all. Strange it may have been, deprived it certainly was not.
Rating: 
Summary: An empathetic journey into the world of the other Mormons
Review: I thought this book was fantastic. In a very human way, it fills a huge gap in what I knew about Mormon History and present-namely, what happened to the tens of thousands of polygamous families when the church shifted from pro-polygamy to anti-polygamy, and who are the tens of thousands of modern-day polygamists and what is their relationship to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The mainstream church teaches that Joseph Smith wrote down a revelation regarding polygamy in 1843, but that he had started practicing it well before then, but never recorded who his "wives" were, nor when they were "married." Then Brigham Young and the Saints in Utah had a whole bunch of wives and were honest and upfront about it. The federal government had a massive clampdown on the lifestyle, and in 1890 the church issued a "manifesto" stating that the church no longer taught nor encouraged the continuance of the doctrine. The way the church teaches it, the people who were in polygamous marriages simply ceased to exist as soon as the manifesto was decreed. We learn in the book that a few days before the manifesto was issued, the president of the Church, Wilford Woodruff, called Dorothy's grandfather into his office. He gave him a calling to move to Mexico and establish a colony there were Mormon Polygamists could legally live their religion. Her grandfather went, but between the lawlessness of the country and inhospitable climate, they could not survive and were forced to return to America. A few events transpired were his viewpoint collided with that of the mainstream church-in addition to having abandoned plural marriage, the Church had drifted away from the spirit of the United Order and Law of Consecration. You see how her grandfather changed from a leader in the mainstream church to a fringe member to an excommunicated Fundamentalist. Dorothy does a fantastic job of showing you the world through the eyes of a child born into fundamentalist sects of Mormonism. It shows her religious heritage and how it connects to the religious heritage of mainstream Mormons. And it shows the life of a child who loved her mommy and daddy, but obviously wasn't cut out to carry on the religious tradition that she was inheriting. The reader can clearly see the follies of Mormon polygamy and the flaws in the various adherents. But the focus isn't on the follies and flaws. Rather, the focus is on the humanity of the children, women, and men who find themselves indoctrinated in a religion of outcasts.
Rating:
Summary: An empathetic journey into the world of the other Mormons
Review: I thought this book was fantastic. In a very human way, it fills a huge gap in what I knew about Mormon History and present-namely, what happened to the tens of thousands of polygamous families when the church shifted from pro-polygamy to anti-polygamy, and who are the tens of thousands of modern-day polygamists and what is their relationship to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The mainstream church teaches that Joseph Smith wrote down a revelation regarding polygamy in 1843, but that he had started practicing it well before then, but never recorded who his "wives" were, nor when they were "married." Then Brigham Young and the Saints in Utah had a whole bunch of wives and were honest and upfront about it. The federal government had a massive clampdown on the lifestyle, and in 1890 the church issued a "manifesto" stating that the church no longer taught nor encouraged the continuance of the doctrine. The way the church teaches it, the people who were in polygamous marriages simply ceased to exist as soon as the manifesto was decreed. We learn in the book that a few days before the manifesto was issued, the president of the Church, Wilford Woodruff, called Dorothy's grandfather into his office. He gave him a calling to move to Mexico and establish a colony there were Mormon Polygamists could legally live their religion. Her grandfather went, but between the lawlessness of the country and inhospitable climate, they could not survive and were forced to return to America. A few events transpired were his viewpoint collided with that of the mainstream church-in addition to having abandoned plural marriage, the Church had drifted away from the spirit of the United Order and Law of Consecration. You see how her grandfather changed from a leader in the mainstream church to a fringe member to an excommunicated Fundamentalist. Dorothy does a fantastic job of showing you the world through the eyes of a child born into fundamentalist sects of Mormonism. It shows her religious heritage and how it connects to the religious heritage of mainstream Mormons. And it shows the life of a child who loved her mommy and daddy, but obviously wasn't cut out to carry on the religious tradition that she was inheriting. The reader can clearly see the follies of Mormon polygamy and the flaws in the various adherents. But the focus isn't on the follies and flaws. Rather, the focus is on the humanity of the children, women, and men who find themselves indoctrinated in a religion of outcasts.
Rating:
Summary: Today
Review: Just so you know - members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) who are known to practice polygomy are excommunicated from the church and are not members, anymore. They may continue to practice what they claim to be Mormonism in their homes and call themselves "Mormon" to others in society, but they are stricken from the records of the church and usually do not attend church meetings, anymore, unless they are trying to change their ways and come back unto Christ. True Mormons adhere by the prophets' teachings and do not practice polygomy today.
I feel sorry for the poor woman who wrote this story. It shames me that such twisted people claim to be Mormons and turn so many away from the church.
Rating:
Summary: Very good read
Review: Ms. Solomon's quest for identity takes half-steps and wears rose-colored glasses. Hers is a unique story for those of us not raised by a religious fundamentalist committed to hierarchy, progeny, and lack of responsibility. She keeps reassuring readers that this man is devoted to love and God, although he ignores the needs of his family to gratify only needs of his own. The fact that his children have to rummage through dumpsters to find food for wives and children while he schemes against polygamist rivals is OK with her. She can't get past "us" against "them," the chosen--this happy little band of outcasts--against the great unwashed. I read the whole story with increasing disappointment.
Rating:
Summary: Best of living history
Review: This memoir is one book that is as intriguing as its cover and title would suggest: the image is that of a butterfly trapped in a jar. The image of the lovely butterfly is obscured by the obvious fact of its captivity and the merest suggestion of an unhappy end (for the butterfly).
So it is with this complex, well-written memoir. Dorothy Allred Solomon describes a her childhood--a warm and loving network of sister-wives and half-brothers and half-sisters webbed together by the patriarch of the clan, her father, naturopathic physician Rulon Allred. Her father is a loving man who supports seven wives and 48 children yet he is often absent from his children's lives, compelled to hide his polygamy even from others of his own denomination. It is a precarious life and history that Solomon describes in this book as she explores both the joy and the tolls that polygamy takes on her own life and extended family. The history of her own solidly polygamous forbears is fascinating and revealing as are her own epiphanies about her life choices and relationships.
This would be an excellent choice for a book group to explore along with Jon Krakauer's "Under the Banner of Heaven."
Sue-Ellen Jones
Fort Collins, Colorado
Rating:
Summary: Excellent writting describes a family life that is different
Review: What could potentially be a seedy novel that pokes fun of a segment of society that is on the fringe turns into an almost heart warming story of growing up in an unusual family setting. She writes with a conversational style describing her very different family, growing up with many syblings, and several mothers. What comes through this book that while polygamy may have an appeal for some, it really comes packed with many loaded issues. Multiple wives creates multiple issues. Logistically speaking it is difficult to support seven wives, and many children. While her father was a doctor, several of the wives worked out of the home to help support the family, and those that were not working out of the home worked constantly trying to keep up with laundry, cooking, and cleaning. Her life was wrought with hiding their family secret, as it is still illegal to have so many wives. Only children of the first wife are legally recognized as being legitimate. Their lives were not easy, and growing up in the church left them often with marrying early to continue this cycle. This book is definatly worth a read! Its definately not the simple tale you think it might be.
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