Review of ‘Shattered Dreams’
Shattered Dreams
by Irene Spencer
Review by Anne Wilde
This book is well written, keeps your interest, and in fact is a real page-turner. With an engaging and descriptive writing style, it’s hard to put it down. You want to learn first if she decides to enter plural marriage and then how it will work for her on both a day-to-day and long-term basis. Irene’s personal story is very compelling and draws in the reader with her vivid and heart-breaking descriptions of life as a second wife in a plural family residing in Mexico.
Several readers may already be familiar with media accounts about the LeBaron family from several years ago, and will be curious to know more about them. This book was especially appealing to me because I have known so many of the characters.
It is intriguing to read more about the history and extremely difficult conditions in which some polygamists lived during the twentieth century in Mexico. However, the reader should be aware that there were monogamist families living in similar situations of poverty in that area as well. And there were also some plural families that did not experience such a bleak day-to-day existence. From a member of the family who was personally familiar with Irene’s living conditions, I have learned that apparently there are many exaggerations throughout the book.
The more I read about Irene’s experiences, the more it seemed that she was just not suited to live in a plural family—rich or poor—for the following reasons:
1. She always wanted to be the “favorite wife,” even from the beginning.
2. She was continually jealous of the other wives, even after decades of living plural marriage.
3. She appeared to have a strong and somewhat uncontrollable sex drive.
4. She wanted to have a husband all to herself.
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I was amazed that she continued to get pregnant (13 times) while at the same time she was threatening to leave her husband (Verlan) and the family. In spite of her polygamous background and teachings, it seems that Irene would perhaps have been happier married to her first love, Glen, in monogamy.
I am concerned that Irene’s individual story related in Shattered Dreams will give readers the impression that many plural wives are under-age, unhappy, uneducated, suppressed, and living in poverty. This is not the case with many contemporary plural wives.
Just as real and compelling are the nearly 100 faith-promoting accounts by plural wives recorded in Voices in Harmony: Contemporary Women Celebrate Plural Marriage. For them, plural marriage not only worked, but was satisfying and rewarding. For many reasons, their journeys have been different from Irene’s—nevertheless they have also been brought “into the light of God’s unconditional love.”
