The past plot takes place in the nineteenth century, and tracks the family and personal history of Ann Eliza Young, the nineteenth wife ( supposedly) of Brigham Young, the early Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints leader who succeeded Joseph Smith as its President.

Jordan, now twenty and building a life for himself in California, reads about his mother's arrest online and feels drawn to drive to Utah to see her.

She has a son, Jordan Scott, one of the excommunicated ' lost boys' whom she personally abandoned at a roadside when he was fourteen at the order of the FLDS Prophet (either Warren Jeffs or a fictionalized version of him). BeckyLyn Scott, the nineteenth wife of a polygamous patriarch in the fictional FLDS compound in Mesadale, Arizona, is accused of murdering her husband in his basement den. The book leads off in the present day with a murder investigation. In the process it deals with a lot of related issues, of religion, oppression, faith, and community in an entertaining if not flawless way. The 19th Wife tracks the issue of polygamy from both ends, you might say, both its roots in the beginning of Mormonism and its results in the present day. It came out in 2009, the year after the 2008 Texas raid on a polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) compound that made the abuses of plural marriage a national issue. One thing the book gets points for at the outset is its timeliness. I grabbed the book with minutes to spare before the bus arrived.

I did a quick search on my phone for reviews, which generally seemed positive. The book seemed to have an interesting premise and promised to tell the story of polygamy in the Mormon faith, a subject I was curious about. I crossed to the used bookstore across from the bus station, but didn't see much of interest until I caught sight of the book near the entrance just as I was getting ready to leave. I picked up The 19th Wife: A Novel because I got bored waiting for my bus.

The 19th wife book summary