The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff

This was my book club pick for this go around, but it wasn't the book I had thought I was picking. I found it on Amazon.com after reading many reviews and thought it sounded good. However, I thought we were going to read the story of Brigham Young's 19th wife who was excommunicated from the Mormon church. That was not the story in this book. This is a fascinating book of fiction based on the life of Ann Eliza Young (BY's 19th wife) but intertwined with a modern day murder mystery taking place in the land of the "Firsts" (the still active religious cult that broke off from the Mormons years ago so they could continue to practice polygamy). The two separate stories converge in some interesting twists and I had to continually remind myself that this was a work of fiction. When I think of plural marriages I always think of the poor wives and how they could possibly be convinced to do such a thing. Before reading this I don't think I had ever considered the effects of plural marriage on children, especially the boys. The males are booted from all they have ever known once they show an interest in females because they then become the competition for the old guys that want to continue to "grow their kingdom." This also got me thinking about the Mormon religion a bit. I don't know too much about it, other than what I get from the Christian perspective and that's obviously biased, but, in my mind, fairly true. Regardless of all that though, it blows my mind that so many millions of people could follow the religion of a guy named Joseph Smith just because he translated two gold tablets when the tablets have NEVER been seen by anyone else. I'm not saying I would have to see them myself to believe, but there would certainly need to be other, eyewitness accounts for me to consider something like that. Oh, I digress...very good book if you can get past the prolific swearing and homosexual sub-plot.