![]() where her father-in-law was the brutally efficient police chief and head of the religious police.Įventually, she returned to Canada, graduated from university, divorced her husband and helped her father establish Mormon Hills School.ĭespite its title, the book is as much an apologia for her father as an homage to grandmothers who sacrificed their hopes, dreams and aspirations to be good wives and mothers of Zion or to mothers like hers who risked losing everything in order to fulfil them.Īnd while her personal quest to define feminism - a curious mix of motherhood and free love - will be of interest to some, it’s her unique perspective on how much Bountiful has changed in the past two decades that’s the bigger draw.Īnd while Blackmore is entitled to her opinion of how those changes came about, the self-described “debater and an academic” is not entitled to her own facts. Pregnant with their second child, Mary Jayne was bundled into a car and moved to Colorado City, Ariz. ![]() Bountiful’s 1,200 residents split between following Blackmore or sticking with Rulon Jeffs, the prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (and later to his son, Warren). Two years later, the community suffered its own apocalypse. Her golden-hued memories of ponies, pet lambs and a loving, tight-knit community are only briefly derailed with mentions of darker events - a cousin jailed for sexually abusing his sister and the rapidly increasing number of her father’s wives startlingly close to her in age.Īs 2000 neared, fundamentalist Mormons were among the apocalyptic cults preparing for the world to end and its leaders began performing dozens of marriages of under-aged girls.ĭespite being the bishop’s daughter and having told her father the name of the boy she wanted to marry, the 17-year-old was given in marriage to the boy’s best friend, a young American man she’d never met. She also ran for mayor of Creston in 2018, not 2019 as the book’s biography says, finishing a distant third to the incumbent.Īs the fifth of the polygamous leader’s 150 children, Blackmore writes that she grew up “in the glory days of Bountiful.” Now 37, she’s disavowed fundamentalist Mormonism even though she is principal of Mormon Hills School - an independent school overseen by her father with just over 100 students that last year received $602,023 in government grants. She’s one of the daughters Jane was forced to leave behind. Mary Jayne has a unique perspective on Bountiful. So, it was with interest and some dismay that I read Mary Jayne Blackmore’s recently released book, Balancing Bountiful: What I Learned About Feminism from My Polygamist Grandmothers. Over the years, Jane has remained a reluctant, but powerful voice for change in the polygamous community, always insisting that education is key.
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