RaveThe Los Angeles Review of BooksUlrich connects women’s organizing in Utah to deep-rooted traditions of female leadership within the church ... As Ulrich is well aware, and as her book demonstrates, none of this evidence for women’s leadership and activism obscures the intensely patriarchal nature of Mormonism ... If the language of rights-based activism was not as central to the lives of mid-19th-century Latter-day Saint women as Ulrich suggests, A House Full of Females nevertheless provides a needed and moving corrective to accounts of Mormon history dominated by men such as Joseph Smith and Brigham Young ... While Ulrich provides a few examples of harmonious families, A House Full of Females leaves little doubt that Mormon polygamy was a colossal mess ... The women of A House Full of Females knew how to wield that weapon, and in stitching their stories together, so does Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.
