The 19th Wife: A Novel (Kindle Edition)

The story opens with Jordan Scott, the excommunicated gay son of a modern day Mormon plural wife. She is number 19. When Jordan was 14 he dared to hold the hand of one of his similarly aged stepsisters. For this act he was expelled from the community. His mother and father left him on the side of a highway with $17 and nothing more. Jordan succeeded in making a life for himself in L.A. doing construction work and partnering with another gay young man. Now fast forward about 5 years. Jordan sees on TV that his mother is accused of murdering his father. In spite of the hard feelings he has in being abandoned at 14 with so few resources he is sure his mother is incapable of murder and he returns to Mesadale, the fundamentalist, polygamous Mormon town in which he was raised to defend her.

The author David Ebershoff weaves this murder mystery in and out of the true history of another 19th wife, Brigham Young's rebellious spouse, Ann Eliza Young. He uses several narrators to tell her tale including reporters, a woman writing a master's thesis, her son, Lorenzo, and Ann Eliza Young herself. Ann Eliza was a beautiful actress living in Salt lake City. She married a man and had two children by him. He failed to support her and she divorced him. Brigham Young was smitten with her and using various means of financial control, he forced her to marry him. He was much older than Ann Eliza, and she did not want to be a plural wife. He mistreated her and she left him escaping the polygamous community under cover of darkness. She then crusades to end polygamy claiming the practice to be barbaric and harmful to wives and their children. She travels on a very successful speaking circuit which is how she supports her two young sons. Lorenzo, the youngest boy accompanies her. She has audiences with congress and president Grant and she accomplishes her goal of outlawing plural marriage in the U.S. and its territories. In 1875 she publishes a bestselling memoir criticizing the Mormon sect and their polygamous customs. Brigham Young is furious with her, and he and the church minions are aghast that she would expose the church to ridicule.

So we have the tale of an early 19th wife interwoven with the tale of a modern day 19th wife accused of murdering her polygamous spouse. These polygamous fundamentalist Mormon sects are really cults that have brain washed their members. We see the danger of cults such as this through the modern day murder mystery. Unlike other reviewers I found the historical fiction of Ann Eliza's life to be more interesting than the modern mystery story. I am not a fan of novels that alternate between different narrators and time periods. For that reason I downgraded this book to 4 stars. However, this author changed the narrator and the time period as seamlessly as possible. The changes were not nearly as annoying as they could have been. I did enjoy the book, and I could not put it down. I'd like to see a film version. I understand there is a Lifetime channel film of this novel. This review is for the kindle version.