Women of Power

Women of Power: the influence of mother & daughter

By Susan Evans McCloud

Cedar Fort, 2022. 136 pages. Nonfiction

Lucy was seventeen when she married Brigham, who forthwith left for the Valley, while Lucy went to St. Louis to work, since, they were still in Winter Quarters, she had nothing else to do. Brigham was quite unhappy when he learned this! One of the remarkable things about Lucy was her sweet temperament strengthened by her spiritual insights. She determined that if she was going to be happy in these circumstances, with all these people and wives, she would have to make herself useful--which she did. Susa was Brigham Young's 41st child. Susa was a poet, a writer, and even a composer. At thirteen she entered the University of Deseret and edited a student newspaper. She learned shorthand and actually recorded the St. George Temple dedication. She founded the Relief Society Magazine and the Young Woman's Journal, which was a remarkable, intimate, but amazingly eclectic publication. Both of these women were instrumental in the early years of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

This is an interesting history of two women who dedicated their lives to their religion, and a glimpse into their triumphs and sacrifices. It is a well-researched biography of a mother and her daughter in the early years of the Mormon church, and it has an old-fashioned and intimate style. There are small sections throughout the book that makes it easy to pick up and read in small doses. As well as the story of Lucy Bigelow Young and Susa Young Gates, we get to know others of the early Utah residents, such as Karl G. Maeser and Emmeline B. Wells. The author has a great love for Brigham Young and his family, having volunteered at the Beehive House for over thirty years, and this affection and familiarity is very present in this book. Recommended for anyone interested in the Latter Day Saint history of Utah, especially that of it's women. 

If you like Women of Power, you might also like: 

A House full of Females: plural marriage and women's rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870

By Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

Alfred A. Knopf, 2017. 484 pages. Nonfiction

  

A stunning and sure-to-be controversial book that pieces together, through more than two dozen nineteenth-century diaries, letters, albums, minute-books, and quilts left by first-generation Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, the never-before-told story of the earliest days of the women of Mormon "plural marriage," whose right to vote in the state of Utah was given to them by a Mormon-dominated legislature as an outgrowth of polygamy in 1870, fifty years ahead of the vote nationally ratified by Congress, and who became political actors in spite of, or because of, their marital arrangements. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, writing of this small group of Mormon women who've previously been seen as mere names and dates, has brilliantly reconstructed these textured, complex lives to give us a fulsome portrait of who these women were and of their "sex radicalism"-the idea that a woman should choose when and with whom to bear children.

At the Pulpit: 185 years of discourses by Latter-day Saint Women

By Jennifer Reeder

The Church Historian's Press, 2017. 452 pages. Nonfiction

At the Pulpit showcases the tradition of Latter-day Saint women's preaching and instruction by presenting 54 speeches given from 1831 to 2016, with selections from every decade since the founding of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The discourses, given by women both well known and obscure, represent just some of the many contributions of women to Latter-day Saint thought. In addition to being a scholarly history, At the Pulpit is intended as a resource for contemporary Latter-day Saints as they study, speak, teach, and lead. These discourses allow readers to hear the historical and contemporary voices of Latter-day Saint women--voices that resound with experience, wisdom, and authority.

MGB