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Robin Johnson is the founder, owner and administrator of the blog www.polygamy411.com that launched in February 2009. She revised the blog in September 2014, and made it a support group as well. It is a blog for all who have a positive interest in polygamy.
Johnson is a veteran detective. She worked for a law enforcement agency in her home town for many years and is now self-employed. She has specialized training and experience in investigating domestic violence cases and expertise in interviewing and helping victims of domestic abuse.
Having a sincere passion to help others, she uses the education, knowledge and skills that she acquired from her profession to help women in polygamous marriages.
Johnson is a lifelong resident of NJ. She with her husband in NJ.
It is with great pleasure that she presents to you, “The Silent Tears of Polygamy”: Based on a True Story of an American Female Living in the US.
Reviewed by Jack Magnus for Readers' Favorite
The Silent Tears of Polygamy: Based on a True Story of an American Female is a contemporary fiction novel written by Robin Johnson. Ana Coleman was a modern, cultured woman who lived on the Upper West Side of New York City and had a career that she found both enjoyable and challenging. She had converted to Islam as a young woman and had led a chaste life throughout her twenties, devoted to studying the precepts of her religion and following the advice of her mentor. While Ana did want to marry some day and experience a life with a loving companion, she was willing to wait for the right man and would not settle for those men who had already tried to form relationships with her. Alec Coleman had been recommended to her by a friend, and he seemed to be everything she was looking for. Like her, he was an American Muslim and a convert, and he also wasn't interested in raising a family. After a brief courtship, they were married in a gloriously lovely ceremony, and Ana felt her life was entering its high point. For five years, it just got better. They both had good incomes and were able to take exotic holidays and live satisfying and fulfilling lives, until it all fell apart. Alec decided he was going to marry Carolyn, a woman he had been seeing before he met Ana, and, no, he didn't want to divorce Ana. A Muslim man could have more than one wife, and a good Muslima would accept her new sister-in-faith and accept that that was what God intended for her. Ana felt betrayed, bereft and utterly destroyed by this new arrangement, and it would take years before she was able to cope with the polygamous relationship her husband forced her into. But she would never be the same confident, successful woman she had been before polygamy entered her life.
Robin Johnson's cultural fiction novel, The Silent Tears of Polygamy: Based on a True Story of an American Female, is a disturbing and heart-wrenching tale about the deterioration of a couple's relationship after the husband decides to marry a second wife. Johnson eloquently conveys the absolute devastation Ana experiences at what feels like the ultimate betrayal at the hands of the person she loves most, and her repeated instances of lashing out at Alec and Carolyn are painful to behold. As an agnostic, I found so many reasons in this story not to adhere to the precepts of an organized religion, especially those which determine that a woman must be obedient to her husband and must accept the imposition of polygamy at her husband's whim. Accepting it as a test from God just didn't work for me. And as a human being, I questioned Ana's reasons for not leaving Alec and looking for a new romantic partner who would find her sufficient in herself. I felt she sold herself short by letting her fears that she might only get worse than what Alec offered keep her in what was ultimately an untenable situation. While this cautionary tale is very well-written, thought-provoking, and one that often had me forgetting that it was indeed a fictionalized account of a true story and not a memoir, I finished the The Silent Tears of Polygamy feeling that I had more questions than I had started out with, and decidedly uneasy about the tenor and the resolution of the story.
