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Wife No. 19 (1901)

by Ann Eliza Young(Favorite Author)

3.75 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0766140482 (ISBN13: 9780766140486)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Kessinger Publishing

review 1: Very interesting read. Some rare material on the Mormon temple rituals of the time and on Blood Atonement deaths in early Utah. She spent a lot of effort painting Brigham Young as a tyrant and offers a cynical view of Young's use of tithing funds and abuses of power. The author is obviously trying to expose the negative aspect of early Utah Mormonism, but it does not come across as an anti-Mormon expose. She seems sincere and generally writes well. Good information for students of early Utah Mormonism and Brigham Young. Her portrait of Brigham Young will be disturbing to most faithful Mormons.
review 2: Fascinating. It's like the LDS version of the FLDS "The Witness Wore Red". Ann Eliza Young grew to hate polygamy and Brigham Young, but she loved and respect... moreed most Mormons she'd grown up among - particularly her own sister wives and all of the women she so pitied who were living as polygamous wives. Ann Eliza genuinely suffered because of polygamy and she was not afraid to share the stories that were happening all around her as she was growing up in the earliest days of Utah's settlement. Most of her stories she witnessed first-hand: she watched as her mother was induced into a polygamous marriage, she listened as women sorrowed with each other and with her mother while she was growing up, she shares her experience as a teenager making a pledge with her girlfriends that they would never enter into polygamy, she watches as her friends inevitably become polygamous wives, and she tastes the bitterness herself when she's forced to become Brigham Young's wife. It was heartbreaking to read her accounts of how women and children were treated and mistreated in polygamy.I've read so many historical books that are looking back on those times that it took me awhile to get used to her present tense. This is an autobiography written in the late 1860s and early 1870s. This book is not only an autobiography, but it also includes a recounting of the history of the church from it's beginning. She talks about Joseph Smith and his teachings, Brigham Young's succession, Saints gathering to Utah, the temple ceremony, blood atonement, Mountain Meadows massacre, and just about everything else going on in early Utah while she was growing up. Her experiences were so interesting! Ann Eliza was born shortly after Joseph Smith's martyrdom and divorced Brigham Young when she was about 32. I recommend this book if you're interested in early Mormon history - particularly in the history of early Utah and polygamy. less

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