Camilla, a Biography of Camilla Eyring Kimball

Camilla Eyring was born in 1894 in the Mormon colonies of northern Mexico. At seventeen she fled with her family from the dangers of revolution and was sent alone to Utah to finish high school and earn her own way in the world. As a young schoolteacher, she met and married Spencer Kimball whilst he waited to be called into military service in World War I. After twenty-five years of rearing a family and supporting her husband in his business, civic, and Church responsibilities, she found herself in 1943 as the wife of an apostle and, in 1973, the wife of the prophet and president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Camilla tells her story, often in her own words, recounting her heritage, her high-spirited youth, and her struggles and triumphs as wife, mother, citizen, and individual. The authors have drawn on autobiographical writings, journals, interviews, and personal acquaintance to tell in fascinating detail of her childhood in Mexico, her maturing years in Utah, her marriage and family experiences in Arizona, and her travels with her husband in the interest of the Mormon Church throughout the world. The book is packed with human interest: her childhood fear that she was going insane; her father's plural marriage; flight from Mexican revolutionaries; the insecurities of a poor but proud teenage girl; a whirlwind courtship and marriage; the terror of having a child stricken with polio; the frightening responsibility of wife of a General Authority; the exhilaration of travel; the anguish of watching her husband suffer through numerous physical infirmities. The woman who emerges is shy but warm, highly intelligent, refreshingly candid, deeply faithful, independent to a fault, unswervingly loyal, and reassuringly human.