Set in a secretive offshoot of the Mormons that still practices plural marriage, Jordan, a young man expelled as a teenager from his community (he calls it 'Saudi America') for innocently holding hands with a half-sister, returns to Utah to defend his mother. His polygamous father has been found dead in front of his computer, and one of his wives - Jordan's mother - is in jail accused of the crime.
In a parallel narrative, Ann Eliza Young, the 19th and final wife of Brigham Young, leader of the Mormon Church in the latter half of the nineteenth century, tells the sensational story of how her parents were drawn into plural marriage and how she herself escaped her powerful husband to lead a crusade to end polygamy in the United States.
Bold, shocking and enthralling, The 19th Wife expertly draws together these two narratives to explore how religion can distort love and family, in a pageturning literary mystery.
