BOOK REVIEW: "The Lonely Polygamist"

The Lonely Polygamist

By Brady Udall

Copyright 2010

W.W Norton & Company, Inc.

Adult Fiction

3.5 Bookmarks

In honor of my recent addiction to Sister Wives on TLC, I read The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall. I browsed the jacket description of this book and was fascinated...a polygamist with four wives who has, of all things, an affair. Honestly, I can't even imagine a man having enough time or energy for four women, let alone five (plus the challenges of keeping the 5th one a secret from the other four!!) It sounded hilarious and I thought I'd check it out.

So I started into the book and, frankly, I was a little disappointed. There were a lot of really sad things that had happened to the main character (a death of a child, a stillbirth, a wife who is a bit of a mental case). It didn't turn out to be quite the comedy I was expecting.

The main character, Golden Richards, lives in a somewhat typical polygamist community near Virgin, Utah (as an aside, I have a great photo of one of my husband's buddies standing in front of the Virgin, Utah, sign back when they were teenagers. This poor, teenage boy had lost a bet and had to stand in front of the "Virgin" sign and have his picture taken.....hilarious). Anyway, Golden owns three houses for his four wives and shuffles between them, always spread too thin to really do much good (I imagine this is a fairly accurately painted picture). Golden's construction business isn't doing so well, so he ends up having to take a job outside of town. And that's when the trouble begins.....just up the road a bit.....in Nevada......where prostitution is legal.

I won't spoil the story here, but suffice it to say that Golden's situation reminds me of that old story about how a lie spreads itself around and comes back to haunt you. Golden allows one little inkling of bad thoughts enter his mind. Then another slips in. Then another and another, until he isn't quite sure exactly what kind of person he really is. And those little thoughts definitely come back to haunt him in the end.

I was disappointed with the ending. It was quite sad and depressing. And it sure made me feel sorry for just about anyone who lives this kind of life (even the happy-go-lucky Brown family on Sister Wives). But generally-speaking, it was an enjoyable read. Probably a little higher ranking for someone interested in the topic, and lower ranking for someone who really thinks polygamists are quack jobs.

BOOK REVIEW: "Escape"

Escape
By Carolyn Jessop, with Laura Palmer
Copyright 2007
Visionary Classics, LLC/Broadway Books
Biographical
5 Bookmarks

What an incredible story!!! This amazing book is a shocking look at what can happen when one perverted man is given too much power. The Fundamental Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) is a male-dominated dictatorship that has suppressed women for over 100 years. Warren Jeffs and his male predecessors have created and maintain a society where a woman is nothing more than property and her only job is to bear as many children as she can.

Carolyn Jessop is born into this polygamist cult. When Carolyn is 18 years old, she is married to a 50-year-old man who already has three wives. She tries to make the best of it, but her story details the suppression and fear that Carolyn lives with from day to day. The abuses she must endure at the hands of her husband and her “sister-wives” are unbearable. Carolyn has eight children with her husband before eventually escaping from his hands and the strong arm of the cult she has lived in her whole life. She ventures into the world as the first woman to ever escape with all of her children. She fights her husband and the cult in court to win custody of the children; a victory for women’s rights everywhere.

I really liked this book. Carolyn Jessop is a strong woman thrust into a role of submission and subservience that she can never fill. As we read about her experiences in early life, it is difficult to imagine because the world she lives in is so vastly different from our own. Can one even imagine a society where you have no right to choose whom you will marry? A society where your only value is in how many children you can bear? A society where girls as young as 14 years old are married to men who are five times their age? A society where women don’t even know that they have any rights at all? Members of the cult are not allowed to watch TV, read a newspaper, or have any contact with the outside world. The children are not allowed to go to public schools. The women are forced to wear their hair in a certain hairstyle and wear clothes that would have perhaps been stylish in the 1850s.

Watching Carolyn go through what she has to go through, you just want to reach into the book, grab her and say, “You don’t have to do this! You have rights!” But women in this cult do not believe that they have any rights. They are ruled by fear and oppression. They don’t know what they’re missing. It brings a whole new light to the things that have gone on in the FLDS ranch in Texas this year. The 15- and 16-year-old girls that were found pregnant or were already mothers on that ranch are evidence of what goes on in this heinous cult.

A very eye-opening book. I give this book a very high recommendation because it was so well written and because I feel it is an important book for our society, especially to those with historical ties to this community.