Monday Book Recs--Michael Wallace's The Righteous

The Righteous is a murder mystery set in a polygamist/Mormon/southern Utah world of a fake branch of the LDS church known as "the church of the anointing."  The setting itself interested me, probably because I am a Mormon. But I've seen stories set in this world that I put down pretty easily. The problem is making too easy judgments about who is right and wrong, and what a "cult" is, and about male/female power dynamics and the wrongness of this way of life. I'm not trying to say polygamy is great. And just FYI, the mainstream LDS/Mormon church does not allow the practice of polygamy any longer. Nonetheless, for me as a mostly practicing Mormon, this is part of the heritage of being a Mormon. Trying to get your head around the complexities of the argument and at the same time to understand why people still live in this world today, is dark and fascinating to me.

After I read my Kindle sample of the book, I knew I had to buy it. And I was so, so glad that I did. I ripped right through it in one day. The character of Jacob feels so real to me, his doubts about the church seemed like they came right out of my head. And yet he continues to live the life, faking it until he makes it, which is part of what I do. It's never obvious if this is "right" or "wrong," and I loved that ambiguity. I also have to say that I loved the female characters in this book. The author is male, and I am sometimes dubious about men writing female characters, even some of my favorite male authors. In addition, this book begins in the head of Amanda, a character who dies at the end of the first chapter. I hate that! I kept reading it, realizing that all of this sympathy I felt for her was going to be wrenched away from me and I was going to have to identify with another character. To me, that is one reason why I dislike reading adult fiction of all kinds. I don't like head hopping. But like George R. R. Martin, Michael Wallace's writing was so well done that I immediately liked the next pov character, Jacob, and his sister Eliza. In fact, all of the female characters were done perfectly, all interesting in non-stereotypical female ways. They are polygamists, but they aren't stupid polygamists, which is part of the plot. But I don't want to give too much away.

There is a lot of talk in the Mormon community about when and whether we will ever have our own Shakespeares that write about the Mormon life. This isn't exactly mainstream Mormon life being depicted here, but all of the topics, conflict of faith and science, obedience and free will, male and female roles, power corrupting, were so well done that they can easily be transferred to other spheres. And there was a tiny hint of a speculative element in the ending, which I don't want to spoil. OK, if I were to have on quibble, it might be that the villains in this book are a bit too villainous. But as soon as I write that, I remember little bits that were offered here and there about one of the villains as a boy, and I realize they weren't wholely villainous, but the situation they are in so distorts reality that it allows them to become villains. So it works. I loved the idea of what happens to the Lost Boys, and the metaphor of the pride of lions. I can't wait to read the next book in the series.

This is the second book I've read that was published as an ebook and that was absolutely amazing. I am going to have to get over my prejudice against self-publishing. The ebook world seems to be making things completely different.