Secrets and Wives
The Hidden World of Mormon Polygamy
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
EXPOSING MORMON POLYGAMY: What do we really know about modern practicing polygamists—beyond what’s portrayed in Sister Wives and HBO’s Big Love?
We’ve seen the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in the news, the underage brides in pioneer dresses on a Texas ranch. But the FLDS is just one of many groups that have broken with mainstream Mormonism to follow those parts of Joseph Smith’s doctrine disavowed by the LDS Church.
Gaining unprecedented access to these communities, journalist Sanjiv Bhattacharya reveals a shadow country teeming with small town messiahs, dark secrets, and stories both heartbreaking and strange. Polygamy's dark side—incest, forced marriages, and physical abuse—is laid bare. But Bhattacharya also finds warmth in the fundamentalist diaspora and even finds himself taking an ideological stand for polygamy’s legalization.
More than just an expose of Mormon polygamy, Secrets and Wives is the personal journey of a foreign atheist and liberal, a stranger in a strange land who grapples with hard questions about marriage, monogamy, and the very nature of faith.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Veteran journalist Bhattacharya builds upon his Marie Claire article and Chanel 4 documentary, The Man With 80 Wives, to arrive at a book-length investigation of polygamy that is as much about this fringe community as it is about Bhattacharya's efforts to get them to talk to him. From his telling beginning, a quote from Bob Dylan, Bhattacharya is amusingly off and running, and readers will want to follow his punchy magazine-trained voice wherever it may lead; "dating is verboten in Centennial Park. Only God decides who hooks up with whom." His access into polygamist compounds is impressive, and the subjects that accept him into their home are given ample room to make the case for or against the practice. Ultimately the author finds polygamists to admire, polygamists who are amusing "nutjobs," and polygamists who are utterly terrifying. He inserts himself into the narrative from page one, often voicing the skepticism he expects of most readers ("I believe that the title of this book has already pissed off several million people."). As the story unfolds, focus shifts more inward, and Bhattacharya examines his own spirituality in a move that feels less like a tangent than his obvious, if unexpected, destination.
