But the great mystery in this novel is the sudden genesis of a new religious faith. The modern-day whodunit has some fascinating characters and held my interest.

However, Young is surprisingly complex, no cardboard villain but, for all his deep flaws, a visionary leader. One sympathizes with Ann Eliza, pressured into entering marriage with Brigham Young and desperate to escape it. The history of the settlement of Utah is riveting and highly dramatic. When characters are seized by passion, it is religious passion. The novel’s cover, depicting a possibly nude young woman, is the most erotic thing about it. The Mormon Church, of course, abandoned plural marriage long ago, but his parents were members of a polygamous cult claiming to uphold true Mormonism. He juxtaposes the world of modern polygamous families down on the remote Utah-Arizona line with the life of a junior wife of 19th-century Mormon patriarch. Her saga alternates with a contemporary murder mystery in which a young man tries to clear his mother, who is accused of murdering his father. Ann Eliza eventually rebels against “celestial marriage” and becomes a public figure who crusades against polygamy. It begins before she is born, with her mother’s youthful conversion to Mormonism, and recounts decades of Mormon history through first-person accounts by Ann Eliza and other characters. One, set in the 1800s, is a fictionalization of the true story of Ann Eliza Young, nineteenth wife of Brigham Young. The 19th Wife John O'Connell Fri 19.09 EST D ual time-frames have become such a clich of book-club faux-lit that it's easy to forget how effective they can be.

The 19th Wife has two plotlines, unrelated except that the Mormon faith and polygamy figure in both. There is never enough money or love to go around. The author wants us to know that plural marriage creates heartbreak for women and coarsens the character of men. If you are contemplating a polygamous lifestyle, this novel will talk you out of it.

The 19th wife book review