Confession: I love books about Mormons

The 19^th Wife, by David Ebershoff

From The New Yorker:

“This ambitious third novel tells two parallel stories of polygamy. The first recounts Brigham Young's expulsion of one of his wives, Ann Eliza, from the Mormon Church; the second is a modern-day murder mystery set in a polygamous compound in Utah. Unfolding through an impressive variety of narrative forms—Wikipedia entries, academic research papers, newspaper opinion pieces—the stories include fascinating historical details. We are told, for instance, of Brigham Young's ban on dramas that romanticized monogamous love at his community theatre; as one of Young's followers says, "I ain't sitting through no play where a man makes such a cussed fuss over one woman." Ebershoff demonstrates abundant virtuosity, as he convincingly inhabits the voices of both a nineteenth-century Mormon wife and a contemporary gay youth excommunicated from the church, while also managing to say something about the mysterious power of faith.”

This book is a page-turner that I cannot recommend more highly. I (and my whole book club) loved it.

With that said, if you happen to catch the Lifetime movie version, do not watch it! Read the book. Did you notice in the last sentence of the New Yorker description that one of the main characters is gay? Well, according to Lifetime, it’s ok to change that. They got cutie pie Matt Czuchry to play Jordan and apparently couldn’t let him be gay. This omission required skipping over some of my favorite secondary characters in the novel. And they significantly increased the role of Queenie, played by Chyler Leigh. Oh, do I sound irritated? I am.

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, by Jon Krakauer

These two books could probably have also fit under the murder books category, but because they are about Mormons, they get their own entry. Using a brutal 1984 murder of a young woman and her 15-month old daughter as the lynch pin, Krakauer traces the history of the Mormon church from its founding by Joseph Smith, through upstate New York, the Midwest, and its eventual settlement in Utah. Krakauer uses secondary and primary historical sources and interviews. It is a really interesting read, particularly because of the rate at which the Mormon faith is growing around the world.