Those left hanging

There are wonderfully lyrical passages in "The 19th Wife," images of the red-rock landscape of southern Utah. Equally memorable are the little tidbits one discovers: of how, for instance, FLDS women are forbidden to cut their hair, which they're told they'll need in heaven (which explains those remarkable hairdos worn by the women in Texas), and are forced to dress in long homemade dresses that Ebershoff calls "Mormon burkhas." Occasionally, he strikes an inadvertently funny note, as when Jordan first tells Tom that he's come back to Utah because his mother, the 19th wife of a chat-room-addicted hypocritical polygamist bully, has been accused of killing her husband and may go to the chair for it, and Tom responds, "Shoot, that's a lot to deal with."

Shoot, indeed. It is a lot to deal with, and yet deal Ebershoff does. "The 19th Wife" is a big book, in every sense of the word. It sweeps across time and delves deeply into a world long hidden from sight. It offers historical and contemporary perspective on one of the world's fastest-growing religions and one of its oldest practices, and in the process it does that thing all good novels do: It entertains us.

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Judith Freeman is the author of several books, including "The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved" and "Red Water: A Novel."