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Show UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY communities, noting that is one of the best-compensated industrial occupations. Still, she would obviously prefer a future in which no men had to descend underground to earn a living, no hills were decapitated to uncover their treasures, and no coal-fired power plants spewed their particulate matter into the atmosphere. But like many other advocates of clean, renewable energy, she underestimates the massive scale of the transformation that would be required to replace the energy-density of fossil fuels: all of the windmill forests that would have to cover the hills, all of the quiet desert valleys filled with unsightly solar collectors; the shorelines sacrificed to tidal generation schemes and the pain to consumers compelled to pay more and more for the electricity on which their lifestyle depends. EDWARD A. GEARY Huntington The Midwife: A Biography of Laurine Ekstrom Kingston. By Victoria D. Burgess. (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2012. xiv + 272 pp. Cloth, $26.95.) LAURINE EKSTROM KINGSTON is a fascinating subject for biography. The first wife of the son of Charles Elden Kingston, founder of the Davis County Cooperative Society and the Mormon fundamentalist Latter-day Church of Christ (LDCC), Kingston dedicated much of her life to midwifery within her church community and outside of it. The Midwife is Victoria D. Burgess's attempt to share Kingston’s life and philosophy. In addition, The Midwife includes a brief history of one of the most notorious polygamist groups in the country, as well as Kingston's role in the home birth movement in Utah. Born in Idaho in 1931, Kingston and her parents moved to Bountiful in 1935 to join the Davis County Cooperative Society. Her Mormon mother and Lutheran father were drawn to the Co-op primarily for its economic utopianism. All members consecrated their property to a common pool and drew upon the Co-op's funds when needed. Members denied themselves of worldly goods in order to keep their hearts pure. While many Co-op members entered into polygamist relationships, Kingston's father was never interested in taking a second wife. With the approval of the Kingston leadership, Kingston finished high school and earned her Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) degree in 1951. She soon found work at LDS Hospital. She married her “love match,” Leon Kingston, the eldest son of the churches founder Charles Elden. After Kingston became a mother she stayed home with her children. Eventually her husband took her sister Rowenna as a second wife. As her children grew older, Kingston felt herself “called” by God to serve as a midwife. A 198 |
