David Ebershoff’s The 19^th Wife:  A Novel

“The pretty ones never get out” of the First’s isolated polygamists’ towns, and they kick the boys out to reduce their competition. Ebershoff manages to take you into one of these places and reveals how these cults work. It’s not a pretty picture, but it’s happening today in the hinterlands of Utah and Arizona.

While his writing is mediocre, he manages to carry two storylines in parallel and give the reader a sense of the founding of the Mormons. I would have preferred a good essay to this 507-page book.