The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff ISBN: 9780812974157
Published by Random House Publishing Group on June 2, 2009
Genres: Historical Fiction, Mystery
Pages: 544
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It is 1875, and Ann Eliza Young has recently separated from her powerful husband, Brigham Young, prophet and leader of the Mormon Church. Expelled and an outcast, Ann Eliza embarks on a crusade to end polygamy in the United States. A rich account of her family’s polygamous history is revealed, including how both she and her mother became plural wives. Yet soon after Ann Eliza’s story begins, a second exquisite narrative unfolds–a tale of murder involving a polygamist family in present-day Utah. Jordan Scott, a young man who was thrown out of his fundamentalist sect years earlier, must reenter the world that cast him aside in order to discover the truth behind his father’s death. And as Ann Eliza’s narrative intertwines with that of Jordan’s search, readers are pulled deeper into the mysteries of love, family, and faith.
A rich, historical fiction interspersed with a modern-day murder mystery, both centering around the Mormon (and then Firsts) practice of polygamy- it was as dense and detailed as you’d expect such an undertaking must be. I was honestly disappointed to get to the author’s notes and learn that although the details of Ann Eliza’s and Brigham Young’s lives (and those surrounding them) were researched and factual, the inserted essays, letters, and other ‘historical findings’ are fiction. This is mainly because the consistent pausing of the third-person narrative to insert (what is positioned to look like) an extant letter or deposition seemed like a choice to bolster the circumstances and supposition of that person’s character. After all, historians (and history) only get a sense of who someone was by what they leave behind. So to discover it was all fiction made me wonder why the author chose to position himself as more of a historian and less of a writer, with this style, in the first place.
Narrative structure aside, this book was engaging enough to cause more than a couple of 1am “just one more chapter” moments- less so because the characters are compelling (though I did love Jordan) and more because there’s a lot to unpack about the Church of Latter-Day Saints, their original beliefs, their exodus to SLC, and how a Saint embodies their religion. I thought it was very respectfully portrayed in the book- I have Mormon friends I would recommend this book to- but I am a skeptic of that religion. In truth, I’m a skeptic of all religions, but it was nice to learn something new about the historic settlement/emigration (I never before grasped the scale of that) and how Young was able to maintain (with population consent) control of all avenues of power in the growing cities of Utah. I was also introduced, very briefly, to Victoria Woodhull- who I’ll be looking to learn more about soon.
The modern murder mystery is not as engaging as you might think- it’s very much a plot device, because the majority of the book focuses on Ann Eliza’s life. However, I know the Firsts cult are not a fiction- my aunt was a librarian in AZ and when she drove the bookmobile she made a point to go to their local compound and try to get the women to read. From her pitiful stories, I have zero doubts that Ebershoff’s portrayal is less than factual in its generalities. So, CW for those that need it: non-graphic mention of child neglect, child abandonment, sexual abuse, and misogyny.
The ending was satisfactory- I hadn’t figured out who had committed the murder until the very end (where the author wants the reader to know) but then, I didn’t care too much. Jordan’s relationship with his mother was, to my thinking, far too broken for me to give one iota of a care that she be cleared and thus able to break his heart again. I mostly wanted Jordan to learn to trust and let himself be loved again- everything else was incidental for me.
Read for the ClearUrSht readathon and Wide World of HistFic reading challenge.
Reading this book contributed to these challenges:
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