The 19th Wife Read online

  Acclaim for

  The 19th Wife

  A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year and finalist for the British Book Award and the Ferro-Grumley Award

  “This lyrical yet fact-packed epic is both timely and transporting.… Ebershoff’s exhaustive research and deft prose combine to make [The 19th Wife] a literary tour de force.”

  —People (four stars)

  “Ambitious … fascinating … Ebershoff demonstrates abundant virtuosity, as he convincingly inhabits the voices of both a nineteenth-century Mormon wife and a contemporary gay youth excommunicated from the church, while also managing to say something about the mysterious power of faith.”

  —The New Yorker

  “[The 19th Wife] evinces a respect for the difficult mysteries of faith as well as the importance of the family, however that might be defined.… The multiplicity of perspectives serves to broaden Ebershoff’s depiction not only of polygamy, but also of the people whose lives it informs. And this gives his novel a rare sense of moral urgency.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “As timely as it is engaging … Fascinating in its documentary detail, [The 19th Wife] reads like a memoir and ultimately serves to enlighten more than it condemns.… [Its] snappy pace and easy-to-read prose allow us to fall deeper and deeper into the world of a modern Mormon polygamous cult and the twisted logic of plural marriage.”

  —Elle (Reader’s Prize 2008 pick)

  “Funny, profound, and utterly transporting.”

  —Marie Claire

  “Dryly comic and fearlessly honest … The 19th Wife swirls around what it means for an individual to turn his back on faith, and what it means for a religion—Mormonism—to deny the contemporary effects of its own, long disavowed past.… A compelling portrait of the beginnings and ends of Mormon polygamy, and a marvelous examination of its effects on women (the obvious sufferers) and men (also brutalized, the author shows). The 19th Wife is an exploration of how and whether community is possible after a loss of belief.”

  —Newsday

  “Highly personal and completely engaging.”

  —New York Daily News

  “A skilled ventriloquist, [Ebershoff] gives voice not only to his spirited protagonist but also to her dismayed family members, an indignant, vexed Brigham Young and impartial modern historians.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  “Pitch-perfect … rich and full … a book to get lost in … a lot of fun to read.”

  —Minneapolis Star Tribune

  “Compelling, well-written … [Ebershoff] uses fiction, like many before him, to show a deeper truth, with a much wider scope, than any separate (‘real’) look at polygamy could.”

  —The Denver Post

  “Wonderful … Like A. S. Byatt, whose brilliant novel Possession also split the narrative between time periods, Ebershoff uses a series of fictionalized documents to add depth and perspective to his tale.”

  —Sacramento News & Review

  “Part ‘documentary,’ part detective story … [The 19th Wife] goes to the heart of questions raised by polygamy.”

  —The Dallas Morning News

  “As the mystery in David Ebershoff’s novel The 19th Wife unfolds, so does the complexity of understanding what it means for an individual to turn his back on faith.… A compelling portrait of the beginnings and ends of Mormon polygamy.”

  —The Detroit News and Free Press

  “Epic … smart … Ebershoff’s novel has created a national stir in a mostly quiet literary season.”

  —The Salt Lake Tribune

  “The 19th Wife succeeds in illustrating how the same issues have spanned great temporal changes in polygamist culture … the arguments supporting it, the original Mormon customs that sustained it, the less exalted problems it created and the legal issues that eventually drove it underground.… [David Ebershoff] has replicated … powerfully … the turbulent history of polygamy in America.”

  —The New York Times

  “A contender for The Great American Novel. If jazz is the only truly original American art form, Ebershoff sees that Mormonism is the only homegrown religion that has succeeded on a massive scale.… He sees the myriad storytelling possibilities that flow from this grand native myth of upstate New York farmer Joseph Smith.”

  —Pasadena Star-News

  “An exquisite tour de force … Ebershoff brilliantly blends a haunting fictional narrative by Ann Eliza Young … with the equally compelling contemporary narrative of fictional Jordan Scott.… With the topic of plural marriage and its shattering impact on women and powerless children in today’s headlines, this novel is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the subject.”

  —Publishers Weekly (starred and Pick of the Week)

  “Reminiscent of Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose in scope and ambition … Many histories intertwine in [The 19th Wife], and many voices are heard from, ranging from the stately cadences of Victorian steel-nib prose to the most modern lingo.… Ebershoff takes a promising historical premise and runs with it.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Great fun to read with its enticing characters, swift dialogue, and neatly structured plot, Ebershoff’s sensitive and topical tale of hijacked religion and sexual tyranny, true community and freedom, provides much food for thought in the mode of such seriously popular writers as Jodi Picoult, Anna Quindlen, and Andre Dubus III.”

  —Booklist (starred)

  “Wonderful … The 19th Wife is the heir apparent to The Red Tent and, like The Da Vinci Code, is that rare book that effortlessly explicates and entertains all at once.… Ebershoff masterfully moves between two narratives that ultimately become one: the memoir of Ann Eliza Young, Brigham Young’s 19th wife … and a riveting modern murder mystery as taut and deft as any whodunit.”

  —Publishers Weekly, “Galley Talk”

  “Timely … Ebershoff has clearly done his research, as the extensive bibliography shows, but the book never bogs down in dry, factual detail. The 19th Wife subtly relates the way Mormon history continues to affect present-day policies and realities with a surprising amount of insight and sensitivity, creating an entertaining, sympathetic and sometimes very funny novel.”

  —Bookpage

  “A timely tale … Ebershoff alternates between the modern-day mystery and an array of historical documents tracing the introduction of polygamy in the 19th century. Sound dry? It’s anything but.… Because [The 19th Wife] centers continually on the humanity of the people involved—including the humanity of the early church leaders who originated the custom of Mormon polygamy—it’s a good story even if you’ve never felt a driving urge to learn all about early Mormonism.”

  —The Charlotte Observer (four stars)

  The 19th Wife is a work of historical fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to living persons, is entirely coincidental.

  2009 Random House Trade Paperback Edition

  Copyright © 2008 by David Ebershoff

  Reading group guide copyright © 2009 by Random House, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  RANDOM HOUSE READER’S CIRCLE & Design is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a
division of Random House, Inc., in 2008.

  The illustration on this page, based on the original by Stanley Fox, is copyright © 2008 by Catherine Hamilton and is used with her permission.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Ebershoff, David.

  The 19th wife : a novel / David Ebershoff.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-1-58836-748-8

  1. Mormons—Fiction. 2. Utah—Fiction. 3. Young, Ann Eliza,

  b. 1844—Fiction. 4. Polygamy—Utah—Fiction.

  I. Title. II. Nineteenth wife.

  PS3555.B4824A615 2008

  813′.54—dc22 2008000074

  www.randomhousereaderscircle.com

  v3.1_r1

  Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.

  —SAINT AUGUSTINE

  Like all the other arts, the Science of Deduction and Analysis is one which can only be acquired by long and patient study, nor is life long enough to allow any mortal to attain the highest possible perfection in it.

  —ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

  And now, if there are faults they are the mistakes of men.

  —The Book of Mormon, translated by JOSEPH SMITH, JR.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  I. TWO WIVES

  II. WIFE #19: THE RED IN THE DESERT

  III. EARLY HISTORY

  IV. THE ORIGINS OF LOVE

  V. WIFE #19: AN EYE IN THE DARK

  VI. CELESTIAL MARRIAGE

  VII. WOMEN’S STUDIES

  VIII. WIFE #19: THE GUN ON THE SCREEN

  IX. ZION

  X. THE MISSION

  XI. WIFE #19: THE CON OF THE WEST

  XII. THE ACTRESS

  XIII. CONTRACT OF FAITH

  XIV. WIFE #19: OFF THE STRIP

  XV. THE PROPHET’S WIFE

  XVI. MY MOTHER’S FLIGHT

  XVII. WIFE #19: THE GIRL IN SLC

  XVIII. RESTORATION OF ALL THINGS

  XIX. PRISON DIARY OF BRIGHAM YOUNG

  XX. WIFE #19: THE CONVICTION OF JORDAN SCOTT

  XXI. EPILOGUES

  A READER’S GUIDE

  Dedication

  Author’s Note and Acknowledgments

  Other Books by This Author

  About the author

  I

  TWO WIVES

  THE 19TH WIFE

  FEATURING,

  ONE LADY’S ACCOUNT OF

  Plural Marriage and Its Woes

  BEING

  THE CHRONICLE OF PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF

  ANN ELIZA YOUNG—

  19TH AND REBEL WIFE OF THE

  LEADER OF THE UTAH SAINTS AND

  PROPHET OF THE MORMON CHURCH,

  BRIGHAM YOUNG

  WRITTEN BY HERSELF

  WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY

  MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

  AND INCLUDING STEEL-PLATE ILLUSTRATIONS

  EASTON & CO.

  NEW YORK

  1875

  THE 19TH WIFE

  PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

  In the one year since I renounced my Mormon faith, and set out to tell the nation the truth about American polygamy, many people have wondered why I ever agreed to become a plural wife. Everyone I meet, whether farmer, miner, railman, professor, cleric, or the long-faced Senator, and most especially the wives of these—everyone wants to know why I would submit to a marital practice so filled with subjugation and sorrow. When I tell them my father has five wives, and I was raised to believe plural marriage is the will of God, these sincere people often ask, But Mrs. Young—how could you believe such a claim?

  Faith, I tell them, is a mystery, elusive to many, and never easy to explain.

  Now, with the publication of this autobiography, my enemies will no doubt suspect my motives. Having survived attempts on both my life and character, however, I stand unconcerned by their assaults. I have chosen to commit my memories to the page neither for fame, the trough from which I have drunk and would be happy never to return to, nor fortune, although it is true I am without home and have two small boys to care for. Simply, I wish to expose the tragic state of polygamy’s women, who must live in a bondage not seen in this country since the abolishment of slavery a decade ago; and to reveal the lamentable situation of its children, lonely as they are.

  I promise my Dear Reader I shall recount my story truthfully, even when it distresses me to do so. In these pages you will come to know my mother, who by religious duty welcomed four wives into her husband’s bed. You will encounter the old woman forced to share her husband with a girl one-fifth her age. And you shall meet the gentleman with so many wives that when one approaches him on the street, he answers, “Madame, do I know you?”

  I can, and will, go on.

  Under what circumstances does such outrage thrive? The Territory of Utah, glorious as it may be, spiked by granite peaks and red jasper rocks, cut by echoing canyons and ravines, spread upon a wide basin of gamma grass and wandering streams, this land of blowing snow and sand, of iron, copper, and the great salten sea—Utah, whose scarlet-golden beauty marks the best of God’s handiwork—the Territory of Utah stands defiant as a Theocracy within the borders of our beloved Democracy, imperium in imperio.

  I write not for sensation, but for Truth. I leave judgment to the hearts of my good Readers everywhere. I am but one, yet to this day countless others lead lives even more destitute and enslaved than mine ever was. Perhaps my story is the exception because I escaped, at great risk, polygamy’s conjugal chains; and that my husband is the Mormon Church’s Prophet and Leader, Brigham Young, and I am his 19th, and final, wife.

  Sincerely Yours,

  ANN ELIZA YOUNG

  Summer 1874

  WIFE #19:

  A DESERT MYSTERY

  By Jordan Scott

  PROLOGUE

  Her Big Boy

  According to the St. George Register, on a clear night last June, at some time between eleven and half-past, my mom—who isn’t anything like this—tiptoed down to the basement of the house I grew up in with a Big Boy .44 Magnum in her hands. At the foot of the stairs she knocked on the door to my dad’s den. From inside he called, “Who is it?” She answered, “Me, BeckyLyn.” He said—or must’ve said—“Come in.” What happened next? Nearly everyone in southwest Utah can tell you. She nailed an ace shot and blew his heart clean from his chest. The paper says he was in his computer chair, and from the way the blood splattered the drywall they’re pretty sure the blast spun him three times around.

  At the time of his death my dad was online playing Texas hold em and chatting with three people, including someone named DesertMissy. He spent the final seconds of his life in this exchange:

  Manofthehouse2004: hang on

  DesertMissy: phone?

  Manofthehouse2004: no my wife

  DesertMissy: which one?

  Manofthehouse2004: #19

  Sometime later—a few seconds? minutes?—DesertMissy wrote: u there??

  Later she tried again: u there????

  Eventually she gave up. They always do.

  When my mom pulled the trigger my dad had a full house, three fives and a pair of ducks. He was all in. The paper says although dead, he ended up winning seven grand.

  I once heard someone on tv say we die as we lived. That sounds about right. After my dad was shot the blood seeped across his gunsandammo.com t-shirt in a heavy stain. He was sixty-seven, his face pre-cancerously red. Everything about him was thick and worn from a life boiled by the sun. When I was a kid I used to dream he was a cowboy. I would imagine him out in the barn saddling his roan with the white socks, readying himself for a ride of justice. But my dad never rode anywhere for justice. He was a religious con man, a higher-up in a church of lies, the kind of schemer who goes around saying God meant for man to have many women and children and they shall be judged on how they obey. I know people don’t real
ly talk like that, but he did and so do a lot of the men where I come from, which is—let’s just say—way the fuck out in the desert. You might’ve heard of us. The First Latter-day Saints, but everyone knows us as the Firsts. I should tell you right off we weren’t Mormons. We were something else—a cult, a cowboy theocracy, a little slice of Saudi America. We’ve been called everything. I know all that because I left six years ago. That was the last time I saw my dad. My mom too. I know you know this but just in case: she was wife #19.

  His first wife was more than willing to put the rap on my mom. For someone who wasn’t supposed to talk to nonbelievers, Sister Rita had no trouble telling the Register everything. “I was up in the keeping room with the girls’ hose,” she blabbed to the paper. “That’s when I saw her come upstairs. She had one of those faces—it looked funny, all squished up and red, like she’d seen something. I thought about asking but I didn’t, I don’t know why. I found him about twenty minutes after that when I went down myself. I should’ve gone down the minute I saw that face of hers, but how was I supposed to know? When I saw him in his chair like that, with his head, you know, just hanging in his chest like that, and all that blood—it was everywhere, I mean all over him, everything so, so wet, and red—well I started calling, just calling out to anyone for help. That’s when they came running down, all of them, the women I mean, one after the next, the kids too, they kept coming. The house shook, there were so many running down the stairs. The first to get there was Sister Sherry, I think. When I told her what happened, and then she saw for herself, she started crying, screaming really, and the next one, she started crying too, and then the next after her, and so on. I never heard anything like it. The shrieks spread up the line, like fire, catching and spreading, one after the next and pretty soon it seemed the whole house was on fire with screams, if you know what I mean. You see, we all loved him just the same.”