Daughter of the Saints: Growing Up In Polygamy

Product Details

"Probably the best book ever written about polygamy. Neither an apologia nor an exposé."—Salt Lake City Tribune

"I am the daughter of my father's fourth plural wife, twenty-eighth of forty-eight children—a middle kid, you might say."

So begins this astonishing and poignant memoir of life in the family of Utah fundamentalist leader and naturopathic physician Rulon C. Allred. Since polygamy was abolished by manifesto in 1890, this is a story of secrecy and lies, of poverty and imprisonment and government raids. When raids threatened, the families were forced to scatter from their pastoral compound in Salt Lake City to the deserts of Mexico or the wilds of Montana. To follow the Lord's plan as dictated by the Principle, the human cost was huge. Eventually murder in its cruelest form entered when members of a rival fundamentalist group assassinated the author's father.

Dorothy Solomon, monogamous herself, broke from the fundamentalist group because she yearned for equality and could not reconcile the laws of God (as practiced by polygamists) with the vastly different laws of the state. This poignant account chronicles her brave quest for personal identity. Originally published in hardcover under the title Predators, Prey, and Other Kinfolk.

Customer Reviews ::

Polygamy Review - Barbara Mclaughlin - Burlington,Ont. Canada
Somewhat disappointing-not as much about polgamy as I expected given what you hear-except for multiple mothers she seems to have lived a normal life.Not as much scandal as in other books on polygamy.It does however give more of an insight between the meaning of mormonism and polygamy.