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Respecting Marriage (Early and Often): Three Books on Mormon Polygamy

Scandal, betrayal, sex, murder, scoundrels, revelations, and chicken pie: the history of Mormon polygamy has it all. It could not be a more dramatic and fascinating history, though also one filled with compellingly homely details. Three new books offer insights and useful narratives framing this rich history. They don’t entirely capture the drama and breathlessness of that unexpected tale, nor do they offer startling new insights about marriage, gender, and politics in the nineteenth-century United States. Still, they make clear the high stakes and the many lives touched by this extraordinary history. The history of American marriage has captured a great deal of attention, scholarly and otherwise, of late. Who should be allowed to marry whom and in what configuration? In particular, the many years of agitation for same-sex marriage, culminating in the Obergefell v. Hodges decision that makes it legal across all states, have prompted greater consideration of marriage and its history. “As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves”: so declared Justice Anthony Kennedy in the Obergefell decision. Kennedy’s words could easily have described nineteenth-century polygamists of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, who also saw love