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Show WINTER 2013 UHQ pp 91-104_UHQ BReviews/pp.271-296 12/5/12 9:50 AM Page 102 UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY were guilty of being anti-American by reason of race. Although the author ends his book around 1945, he does make references to the aftermath of the war on the lives of the Nikkei community. However, the premise that the long time residents were not actively protesting the government’s actions or clamoring for redress overlooks the evidence that the 1978 biennial JACL convention in Salt Lake City called for redress and reparations from the government: a formal apology for the unlawful incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans, and reparations in the form of monetary payment to survivors. In Nikkei in the Interior West, Eric Walz has written a well-researched and detailed view of the settlement of Japanese Americans in the interior west. He documents the presence and growth of Japanese Americans in the region long before World War II. Through following the lives of real people and their families, he provides insight into their contributions to the social, economic, and cultural fabric of their larger communities. RONALD M. ARAMAKI Dexter, Michigan Plural Wife:The Life Story of Mabel Finlayson Allred. Edited by Martha BradleyEvans. (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2012. vi +190 pp. Cloth, $34.94.) WHEN MABEL FINLAYSON married Rulon Allred in 1937, he already had other wives, including her twin sister, Melba. Mabel became part of a polygamous organization she refers to simply as “The Group.” Her life story offers a personal insight seldom seen into the fundamentalist groups that developed when The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints dropped the practice of polygamy in 1890. Martha Bradley-Evans’s introduction, which occupies almost one-third of the book, and her notes throughout provide excellent background and context. She discusses the end of the practice of polygamy by the LDS church and then provides the bases of the various fundamentalists’ claims to hold the right and authority to continue the practice. For example, when Mabel talks about the “Eight-hour Meeting” during which LDS President John Taylor purportedly granted authority to perform polygamous marriages, Bradley-Evans adds background information with sources. Bradley-Evans was initially given three separate versions of Mabel Allred’s life story: Mabel’s hand-written original “on simple lined paper in pencil, the kind a child would take to school in a notebook” (2). The first typed version had some adjustments in grammar, style and language and shows editing by Mabel, her daughter Dorothy, and son Jerry. Finally there was a second typed version. Bradley-Evans chose to use the original as her 102 |
