Juanita Brooks (Quicksand and Cactus: A Memoir of the Southern Mormon Frontier), and Phyllis Barber (How I Got Cultured: A Nevada Memoir) reconstruct Mormon women’s sexual training during the mid- to late-twentieth century by narrating the story of their lives growing up in Nevada. Each autobiography illustrates the strained position of many Mormon women as they alternately worked to achieve the Victorian-Mormon ideal of women’s chastity while also shaping themselves to become the object of men’s desire and, at times, the survivors of men’s sexual exploitation.

Laura Bush, Holly Welker