Irene Spencer Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist's Wife

Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist's Wife

Irene Spencer

Center Street, Aug 2007, $24.99

ISBN: 9781599957197

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