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| Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist's Wife | 
 enlarge | Author: Irene Spencer
Publisher: Center Street
Category: Book
List Price: $24.99
Buy New: $3.85
You Save: $21.14 (85%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  92 reviews
Sales Rank: 34707
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 6.3 x 1.3
ISBN: 1599957191
Dewey Decimal Number: 289.3092
EAN: 9781599957197
ASIN: 1599957191
Publication Date: August 22, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Irene Spencer did as she felt God
commanded in marrying her
brother-in-law Verlan LeBaron, becoming
his second wife. When the
government raided the fundamentalist, polygamous
Mormon village of Short Creek, Arizona,
Irene and her family fled to
Verlan's brothers' Mexican ranch.
They lived in squalor and desolate
conditions in the Mexican desert
with Verlan's six brothers, one sister,
and numerous wives and children.
Readers will be appalled and
astonished, but most amazingly,
greatly inspired. Irene's dramatic
story reveals how far religion can
be stretched and abused and how one woman and her
children found their way out, into truth and redemption.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 87 more reviews...
 Reviewed by Barb Radmore August 22, 2007
116 out of 124 found this review helpful
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 August 22, 2007
77 out of 79 found this review helpful
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 August 22, 2007
49 out of 50 found this review helpful
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 February 5, 2008
25 out of 26 found this review helpful
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... September 4, 2007
21 out of 21 found this review helpful
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!
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