Monday, November 2, 2009

The 19th Wife


Excerpt from GoodReads:
It is 1875, and Ann Eliza Young has recently separated from her powerful husband, Brigham Young, prophet and leader of the Mormon Church. Expelled and an outcast, Ann Eliza embarks on a crusade to end polygamy in the United States. A rich account of a family’s polygamous history is revealed, including how a young woman became a plural wife.


Soon after Ann Eliza’s story begins, a second exquisite narrative unfolds–a tale of murder involving a polygamist family in present-day Utah. Jordan Scott, a young man who was thrown out of his fundamentalist sect years earlier, must reenter the world that cast him aside in order to discover the truth behind his father’s death.

And as Ann Eliza’s narrative intertwines with that of Jordan’s search, readers are pulled deeper into the mysteries of love and faith.


I received this book through the giveaways section over at GoodReads. I had no idea what it was about and then one day my mom said she was reading it and I was surprised so I picked it up and plowed through it.

We start off in present day Utah, a member of the reculsive "Firsts" has been shot through the chest at close range with a shot gun. His 19th wife, has been charged with his murder. Jordan Scott reads this at the online paper (he is in California) and recognizes his mother as the woman charged. Jordan Scott was excommunicated from the compound when he was young (12? 13?) and has not seen either his mother or his father (the deceased) since.

He's compelled to help her, drives out to Utah to see what's what. Intertwined within that, is the store of Elilzabeth Webb and her daughter Ann Eliza Young, Brigham Young's 19th wife, taking place in the mid-1800s and into the 1809s, when the LDS church banned polygamy.

Parts of this back history were dry and meandering so I skimmed, but towards the middle and end it was very compelling. You could fill a lot of bathtubs with what I do not know about early Mormonism and it's early leaders, and this book did not paint them in a very favorable light. At one point I turned to my husband and said, "There's a major university in this country named after this guy?" But I imagine there is probably more to his story than this one books fictional account.

The present day story was full of bad language that just seemed gratutious. But I think what the author was trying to do, was show how the early adults entered into polygamy willingly, for their faith, and then how that decision shaped the children that were affected. Several times the main character says adults should do what they want but when children are involved they can't.

The resolution of the murder in the present day arc ended rather ubruptly, but it was kind of like, "oh I see," when it did. The clue that led the police to BeckyLynn was an online chat her husband was having, someone was knocking on the door and the other individual asked "who?" and he replied "#19". BeckyLynn was his 19th wife. The clues that led up to the ending were kind of pointless, and didn't really help tie anything up, as it all happens quickly when Jordan finally finds the one important piece of information.

It's galling to me that polygamy and child brides still exists today. It amazes me that still, to do this day, we have no idea how many "wives" Brigham Young or Joseph Smith had. And it amazes me further that these groups claim religious peity and that it has nothing to do with their baser urges, and yet they excommunicate the young boys from their compounds.

The clue that solves the murder for Jordan, it sort of helped me figure out how we have no idea how many wives these men had. Or other men like them for that matter. They don't count them all. They don't count the ones they are not currently "visiting." So if they no longer visit a wife, she is no longer counted as a wife. Though she has no recourse, can't marry anyone else, and is stuck trying to scrap by a living through whatever means necessary.

I enjoyed the book as it's subject matter fascinates me the same way train wrecks hold an audience. If you are at all into religious history I would recommend this to you.

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