Keep Sweet Children of Polygamy Keep Sweet:
Children of Polygamy
 
By Debbie Palmer and David Perrin

Publisher - Dave's Press Inc.
List Price $24.95 (US)
Trade Paperback   400 pages
ISBN: 0968794335
Publication Date: December, 2004

Available from The HOPE Organization.   Order Debbie Palmer's book online from The HOPE Organization.


Keep Sweet: Children of Polygamy
 
Winner of the 2005 VanCity Prize for the best book published in British Columbia on women's issues.
 
Book Description
Best Selling Author, Dr. David Perrin, co-authored Keep Sweet with Debbie Palmer so that readers could understand what it would be like to be a young girl growing up in the polygamous Mormon community of Bountiful. The foreword was written by Jon Krakuer, author of Into Thin Air, Into the Wild, and Under the Banner of Heaven.

Although the book is set in the early 50s and 60s, Debbie's experiences are representative of those that many children of polygamous groups are currently experiencing.

Keep Sweet is non-fiction, but names have been changed to protect the safety and privacy of people mentioned. Based on Palmer's early memories, letters, and diaries, the memoir takes the reader inside the daily lives of children, sister-wives, husbands and leaders and provides an in-depth insight into the teachings of the fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Palmer's story begins when her father takes her to the polygamous community near Creston, BC in 1957. We follow Debbie from age two as she struggles to integrate into a strange society and culture. At age fifteen she becomes the sixth wife to the community's fifty-five year old leader. Keep Sweet follows Debbie's trials until the death of her husband in 1974.

Palmer remained in the community until 1988 when, pregnant with her seventh child, she managed to escape. Debbie currently lives in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan with some of her eight children. She has completed some College and University Studies. She is the author of various bodies of research, a human rights activist, community crime prevention educator and advocate. She has consulted with and been the topic of several documentaries on the topic of Polygamy in North America.

Maclean's Magazine has said of Keep Sweet: Children of Polygamy that it offers "the first, brave look inside the polygamous community of Bountiful, B.C. It's the story of a little girl lost – betrayed by a faith so foreign it seems inconceivable that it still flourishes in the North American countryside."

Excerpt: From Chapter One:
"My father had six wives and I have forty-seven brothers and sisters. My oldest daughter is my aunt and I am her grandmother. When I was assigned to marry my first husband, I became my own step-grandmother since my father was already married to two daughters of my new husband. According to the eternal laws of the polygamous group I grew up with, I will be a step-grandmother to many of my siblings for ‘all time and eternity."

Excerpt: From Chapter Four:
"I followed the pictures her words painted and I was instantly there. We walked across the buttercup-covered meadow, killdeers crying as we went, up the emerald greens of the densely covered deer trail to the spring. Daisies, snapdragons, forget-me-nots and majestic Scotch and Canada thistles reached out to me from along the creek. If the place Thomas had gone to was this wonderful and warm, then I guessed it was okay for him to go. If he would never be blue with cold again, then I was glad he was gone, but when I looked up into Mother's face and deep into her eyes, she didn't look as happy as she should have if heaven was as wonderful as she said."
 
Order Debbie Palmer's book online from The HOPE Organization.
 
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