This book elicits so many negative emotions, as it should. These feelings come from my ancestral past, from my maternal great great grandmother Lavina Young, who married John D. Lee as a 13th or 14th wife (she and her sister Polly married him on the same day). They come, unbidden and still painful, from a relatively recent personal family trauma. And yet, life is messy, and my feelings can also be ambivalent. My own beloved sister died at age 35, leaving 3 children and a wonderful husband who later married a divorced woman (a good friend of theirs) who took my sister's motherless children under her wing and gave them a step-brother and then two half brothers that we love. I have no idea how all of this will shake out, but I appreciate that Carol Lynn Pearson has looked at this uncomfortable subject so carefully and passionately. Thanks to her, the personal stories of so many women cannot be swept back under the rug, and for every story in the book, there are probably hundreds, maybe thousands more. Thank you, Carol Lynn. You are one brave pioneer!
