A Good Read

“Faith, I tell them, is a mystery, elusive to many, and never easy to explain.”

– from The 19th Wife, by David Ebershoff

The last time I got caught up in a 600-page book must have been the last Harry Potter. I devoured that one. This one grabbed my attention just as completely and didn’t let go until I finished it.

The 19th Wife is historical fiction intertwined with a modern murder mystery. The result is a really engrossing, suspenseful novel.

The year is 1875 and Ann Eliza Young has recently separated from her powerful husband, Brigham Young, prophet and leader of the Mormon Church. She had been his 19th wife. Outcast, she divorces him and embarks on a crusade to end polygamy in the United States, before disappearing without a trace.

From this story, the reader begins to gain understanding about how a woman became a “plural wife” and the devastation that it brings – not only to women and children, but to men trying to live decent lives.

After Ann Eliza’s story begins, Ebershoff weaves in a second narrative – a murder involving a polygamist family in modern day Utah. Jordan Scott, a young man who was thrown out of his fundamentalist Mormon sect years earlier, must reenter that world in order to discover the truth behind his father’s death. His mother, also a 19th wife, is accused of the murder.

The book gets a little bogged down in places, but I learned so much about Mormon history and historical events that it was worth the occasional slog through detail. The modern story also held my attention completely and I looked forward to the changing of chapters – keeping up with each story equally.

The book also contains one of the most beautiful descriptions of what it feels like to be an outsider finding acceptance inside a church that I’ve ever read. In the modern part of the story Jordan Scott is gay. That’s why he was kicked out of the Mormon sect he was born into. He meets another ex-Mormon man who takes him to a church that welcomes them unconditionally.

Ebershoff writes, “The church looked like a bingo hall or senior citizen center. Some queen had stenciled a garland of grapes around the walls. The whole thing depressed me.”

A description of the congregation follows – mostly losers and misfits that make Jordan very uncomfortable. There were prayers for a dog who had surgery, a praise for a new job, and time to thank God for blessings.

Then Ebershoff writes, 

“I hated feeling this way. The combo of love and God was supposed to make me puke. So why were my eyes getting all misty? It happened to me that morning in the ‘Vegas, LGBT-friendly, ex-Mormon church, two miles off the Strip,’ (try saying that two times real fast). I got to sit through a sermon holding Tom’s hand. Big fucking deal I know, but where in the world do you get to do that? Not in many places that call themselves houses of the Lord.”

All I can say to that is amen.

“The one who comes to me, I will certainly not cast out.” John 6:37

If you like a good book that teaches you something while it entertains, read this one.