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The 19th Wife

The 19th Wife

Author(s): David Ebershoff

Location(s): Utah

Genre(s): Fiction, Historical

Era(s): Mid 19th Century and Modern

Location

Content

Jordan returns from California to Utah to visit his mother in jail. As a teenager he was expelled from his family and religious community, a secretive Mormon offshoot sect. Now his father has been found shot dead in front of his computer, and one of his many wives – Jordan’s mother – is accused of the crime.

Over a century earlier, Ann Eliza Young, the nineteenth wife of Brigham Young, Prophet and Leader of the Mormon Church, tells the sensational story of how her own parents were drawn into plural marriage, and how she herself battled for her freedom and escaped her powerful husband, to lead a crusade to end polygamy in the United States.

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Book Reviews

Lead Review

“A marvellous evocation of pioneer life… But his sympathy is with Eliza Young and other women trapped in what the Mormons termed ‘celestial marriages'” (Daily Mail)

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