The Sisterhood - 9781403982780

Mormonism fascinates many Americans, but few know what everyday life is like for ordinary women who follow its tenets. In this richly layered and often surprising narrative, award-winning author Dorothy Allred Solomon reveals the nature of the strong bonds that connect women inside The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, from the start of the religion in 1830 to the present era, with the complex influences of modern life.
Through the intimate stories of women in her community, Solomon delves into the hopes, fears and concerns of Mormon women in both the extreme sphere of fundamentalism and the conventional church. She evokes the long tradition of female strength, as in the early Church when the sisters of Zion walked arm in arm with suffragettes and practiced prophecy and healing, before patriarchal influences curtailed these powers. And she sympathetically explores the plight of sisters caught in the underworld of fundamentalism, a world Solomon knows well herself, having grown up as one of forty-eight children in a polygamist family. What results is a textured portrait of women as they strive to follow the often demanding strictures of the Church - including sealed marriages, temple attendance, and other practices unknown in the larger world - and as they handle universal problems of birth, childrearing, and love, often leaning on each other for support as sisters in Christ.