The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff544 pages
Completed 3/25/10
This novel took a novel - no pun intended - approach. Ebershoff successfully mansges to merge a current day story with a grad student's thesis, a nineteenth century autobiography, news reports, and letters into a wonderful story.
Polygamy and FLDS has fascinated me for quite some time, but most memoirs I have read are pretty similar. So when I came across this fiction book regarding the same topic, I was pleased. It didn't disappoint. A present-day 19th wife of a FLDS man is pinned with her husband's murder and her estranged gay son ventures back into the world he had left so long ago to find out the truth. Meanwhile, the mystery is juxtaposed with the 19th wife of Brigham Young - FLDS leader in the later 1800s.
At some points, I was almost bored to tears; early in the novel, it's almost an information overload. But by the end of the book, I could not put it down. The intricate connections between characters was so well written I nearly forgot that this was only a work of fiction.
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