I had wanted to read Under the Banner of Heaven for quite a long time, and finally found a copy at my local used book store this year. I started and stopped reading several times, to pick up lighter, less gruesome novels, but I kept coming back to read this intense, true-crime novel, that is less about the horrible murder of a 24 year old mother and her 15 month old daughter (and it was violently and insanely horrible), as it is about a fundamentalist […]
The More the Merrier….
I am an unabashed fan of Jon Krakauer so I was excited when this book became available at my library. Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith is the story of the Lafferty brothers and the heinous murders they committed in 1984. The Lafferty brothers were Fundamentalist Mormons. They practiced polygamy and communicated directly with God via “revelations.” In 1984, they brutally murder Brenda Lafferty and her 15-month old daughter. Brenda was their sister-in-law and her daughter, their niece. Ron and Dan […]
I’ll Take Two (or More)
Although the Mormon church officially gave up polygamy in 1890, the practice is still associated with it, sometimes through contemporary fundamentalist groups or historically. David Ebershoff takes on both a historic and a contemporary story in The 19th Wife. The first story is a fictionalization of the life of Ann Eliza Young, one of Brigham Young’s wives, who divorced him, and later wrote a book called Wife Number 19, became a public speaker and advocate against polygamy. The second story belongs to Jordan Scott, excommunicated […]