Central Kansas Library System

Jane Witherspoon has a vast inheritance left to her by her Mormon father. Knowing she is romantically involved with a Gentile, Elder Tull has published his claim to make her his wife and obtain her inheritance. Just as Elder Tull and a group of Mormons are about to whip the Gentile and banish him from Mormon Utah, the notorious gunman--and enemy of the Mormons--known as Lassiter rides in and intervenes. The Mormons initiate their punishment on Jane...

Members of the Sisterhood are contacted by Judge Pearl Barnes, who has assisted fourteen pregnant teenagers escape from a secret polygamist sect and needs the sisters' help to keep them hidden in a secure place.

"She's never met the other wives. None of them know each other, and because of this unconventional arrangement, she can see her husband only one day a week. But she loves him so much she doesn't care. Or at least that's what she told herself. But one day, while she's doing laundry, she finds a scrap of paper in his pocket, an appointment reminder for a woman named Hannah, and she knows it's another of the wives. She thought she was fine with her arrangement,...

At 18, Carolyn Jessop was coerced into an arranged marriage with a total stranger, 32 years her senior, who already had three wives. Arranged plural marriages were part of her heritage in the radical offshoot of the Mormon Church that had settled along the Arizona-Utah border. Over the next fifteen years, Carolyn had eight children and withstood her husband's psychological abuse and the watchful eyes of his other wives. Her every move was dictated...

1974: Fifteen-year-old Loretta slips out of her bedroom window to meet her "Gentile" boyfriend. This time, however, her strict Mormon parents catch her returning at dawn and quickly arrange for her to marry the upstanding Dean Harder, a devout yet materialistic fundamentalist who already has a wife and a brood of kids, some not much younger than Loretta herself. Trapped in her role as a "sister wife," Loretta dreams of another, better future, of a...

"Today's Fundamentalist Mormons in the American West resist assimilation like their forefathers. Centered on faith, they survive despite efforts to permanently end their cherished plural family arrangements. While some Fundamentalists like Warren Jeffs go rogue and corrupt their beliefs in heinous crimes, most hold steadfastly to a religion they say is biblical and restored by the first Latter-day Saint prophet, Joseph Smith, in the early 1800s. Mormon...

The story of Ann Eliza Young's crusade against polygamy interwines with a tale of murder involving a polygamist family in present-day Utah.

The true story of one girl's coming-of-age in a polygamist family. Ruth Wariner was the thirty-ninth of her father's forty-two children. Growing up on a farm in rural Mexico, where authorities turn a blind eye to the practices of her community, Ruth lives in a ramshackle house without indoor plumbing or electricity. At church, preachers teach that God will punish the wicked by destroying the world and that women can only ascend to Heaven by entering...

Three spirited wives in nineteenth-century Utah. One husband. A compelling novel of family, sisterhood, and survival by the Washington Post bestselling author of One for the Blackbird, One for the Crow. 1856. Three women-once strangers-come together in unpredictable Utah Territory. Hopeful, desperate, and willful, they'll allow nothing on earth or in Heaven to stand in their way. Following the call of their newfound Mormon faith, Tamar Loader and...

As the reluctant new leader of Blister Creek, Dr. Jacob Christianson dares to hope he finally has delivered his people from the brutal Kimball clan, until his adopted son Daniel begins suffering from terrifying visions. Jacob knows all too well the mental illness that plagues the Kimballs, Daniel's biological family, fueling their thirst for vengeance and power.