Those left hanging

HAS THERE ever been a more salacious subject than polygamy? The very thought of the harem -- one husband, three or four wives, or in the case of certain Mormon settlers, 15 or 20 -- sets the imagination perking. The first wife might be a seasoned crone of 70, the last a nubile lass of 13, and in between a veritable female stable.

The nonstop media coverage of the raid earlier this year on a polygamist compound in Texas and the success of HBO's "Big Love" are proof the public can't get enough of polygamy, in spite of its tawdry aspects (including incest and child molestation). Mainstream Mormons, of course, just wish the subject would go away. It's always been the monkey on their back, making them seem even more like outsiders. In the 19th century, Mormons were sometimes referred to as "white Muslims" because they were thought to keep harems and had their own bible -- the Book of Mormon -- a tome that Mark Twain (wag that he was) found so unreadable he called it chloroform in print.

Mormons rejected polygamy in 1890, forced by Washington, D.C., to choose between statehood for Utah and their "Divine Principle." Nevertheless, polygamy has continued to flourish among the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, an offshoot Mormon sect known as the FLDS, whose members have holed up in remote settlements in the American West, Mexico and Canada, where they have been allowed to do whatever they want, with whomever they want, while everyone has mostly looked the other way.

This is tragedy, because real crimes were being committed against women and children for many years (and still are) and no one seemed to care -- the sort of crimes that David Ebershoff details in "The 19th Wife," his voluminous new novel that weaves two stories, one historical and one contemporary, and in the process lays bare the oxymoronic idea of American polygamy.

Mormon prophet Brigham Young (who warned his people against reading novels, suggesting they were written in a "spirit of lying" that led straight to hell) had so many wives there's long been a discussion over just how many Mrs. Youngs there really were (the number generally accepted is 27). It was his 19th wife, a feisty and beautiful divorcee named Ann Eliza Young, who became the prophet's major marital headache and who helped bring polygamy to an end by eventually suing for divorce, angered by her husband's neglect and the humiliating circumstances of polygamy. In 1875, she published a memoir, "Wife No. 19: One Lady's Account of Plural Marriage and Its Woes," which she promoted on a nationwide tour. It is this memoir that Ebershoff draws on to create the historical portion of his tale and which gives his book its title.