David Ebershoff – The 19th Wife

70. The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff (August 2008)

Length: 587 pages

Genre: Historical Fiction/Mystery

Started: 24 May 2008
Finished: 25 May 2008

Summary: The 19th Wife contains intertwined stories: a modern-day murder mystery, and a historical account about the early days of Mormonism. In the modern story, Jordan Scott is a “lost boy” – a child of a polygamous sect that persists in the deserts of Utah, dumped on the side of the highway when he fourteen. Now he’s twenty and living in L.A., until he sees the front page headline: His mother, the 19th of 20-plus wives, has been arrested for murdering his father. Jordan knows instinctively that she’s innocent, but in going back, he’s forced to face the family, lifestyle, and faith that abandoned him, and the scars that his childhood left on his heart. Running parallel to Jordan’s story is the (fictionalized but true) story of Ann Eliza Young, one of Brigham Young’s wives, and the one who in her publicized divorce and outspoken apostasy to the Mormon church helped to bring about national reform of polygamy laws.

Review: The question of polygamy has always been a thorny one in my own personal ethical code. I believe pretty strongly in not only the correctness, but also the vital necessity of the separation of church and state, and so legislation against polygamy as a religious practice always rubs me in exactly the worst way. And yet, in the wake of recent widely-publicized cases, the social realities of the practice of polygamy tend to be horrible enough, particularly where the children are concerned, that part of me says “we should really do something about that.” (Although I do wonder if the fact that it’s illegal isn’t a contributing factor to the horrible social outcomes, much like illegal drugs – if polygamists weren’t forced to live so far off the grid, wouldn’t it be easier to keep an eye out for child abuse, rape, and give those women who wanted a way out the means to do so?) In any case, reading The 19th Wife didn’t solve any moral dilemnas for me, even though it comes down pretty vehemently on the anti-polygamy side, but it definitely did make me reconsider the issue, as well as providing some background and historical perspective about the beginning of the Mormon faith and the practice of polygamy of which I was previously unaware.

As a novel, it’s quite good, although not without its faults. It was absolutely an absorbing read, and is a thick book without being long – the almost 600 pages passed quickly and without dragging. The writing itself was nothing special, no fancy literary tricks, but it got the job done without getting in its own way. There were elements that I didn’t think worked quite as well as the author had intended – in the modern storyline, especially, there were a few character elements and sub-plots that seemed extraneous. I also was a little put off by the format of the historical sections. Not so much by the format per se, which was a combination of (fictional) memoirs, letters, interviews, and articles, but more by the decision to fictionalize documents that actually exist. Ebershoff explains this to a degree in his author’s note, but Ann Eliza’s memoir actually exists (and can be read online at Google Books), and so the fact that he re-wrote it but presented it as actual excerpts a) leads to her language, if not her perspective, feeling overly modern and therefore historically inaccurate, and b) seems like he didn’t trust her to properly tell her own story. It’s a relatively minor transgression on the grand scale of things, and didn’t ruin my enjoyment of the book, but was always niggling in the back of my mind and had a tendency to pull me out of the story. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: An absorbing, intensely interesting, and very timely read now that Mormons are experiencing a bit of a vogue in pop culture. People who like HBO’s series Big Love would probably enjoy this book (and vice-versa), although I think it would also appeal to anyone interested in a unique bit of American religious history.

This Review on LibraryThing | This Book on LibraryThing | This Book on Amazon

• David Ebershoff’s Website, although it hasn’t been updated with info on this book yet
• Devourer of Book’s Review of The 19th Wife

First Line: In the one year since I renounced my Mormon faith, and set out to tell the nation the truth about American polygamy, many people have wondered why I ever agreed to become a plural wife.

Vocab:

• p. 34: “The news out of Salt Lake’s seraglio has caught even our attention.” – the part of a Muslim house or palace in which the wives and concubines are secluded; harem.
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• p. 49: “She accepted a position with Mrs. Harmony in her mansarded mansions with an ebony piano in the parlor.” – a hip roof, each face of which has a steeper lower part and a shallower upper part
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• p. 49: “For his part, every day Captain Zucker gave Gilbert a new toy – cloth balls, jackstraws, and a quoits set with a bright red hob.” – a game in which rings of rope or flattened metal are thrown at an upright peg, the object being to encircle it or come as close to it as possible.
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• p. 283: “Although it was autumn, the weather had een especially hot, and Brigham was wearing his summer costume familiar to all in Deseret: the prunella suit, a vivid white shirt kept pristine by his laundress daughter, Claire, and a neck cloth.” – a smooth-faced fabric made of mixed fibers or wool, formerly used in the manufacture of women’s dresses and of robes for clerics, scholars, and lawyers.
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• p. 288: “A coloratura soprano imported from Wadowice, where the beautiful girls are dark and cold.” – a lyric soprano of high range who specializes in music with runs, trills, and other florid decorations.
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