New Mormon Books

David Ebershoff takes two distinct narratives, adds faux-historical documents, letters, and Wikipedia entries, and comes up with a completely engrossing look at the history of polygamy in America. This is a case of a hugely ambitious idea - multiple narrators, different time periods, the blending of history and fiction - that absolutely gets it right. I was grabbed by the first page, and by the end of the 500+ page novel didn’t want it to end.

Review & Blog Tour - The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff
By Elizabeth
As Usual, I Need More Bookshelves, June 10, 2009
http://needmoreshelves.blogspot.com/2009/06/review-blog-tour-19th-wife-by-david.html

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In the 19th century, for many in the East Coast of the United States, Brigham Young may have been the image they saw when they thought of Mormonism, but the ideas they heard coming from the new religion came mostly from the Apostle Orson Pratt. That’s a conclusion reached by Top of Utah author Breck England, in his still-important biography of Pratt, The Life and Thought of Orson Pratt.

Political Surf on the life of Mormonism’s first intellectual
by Doug Gibson.
The Political Surf, Ogden Standard Examiner Blogs, Jun 19th, 2009.
http://blogs.standard.net/2009/06/19/political-surf-on-the-life-of-mormonisms-first-intellectual/