Hidden Wives

By Claire Avery

Reviewed by Jeffrey Needle
On 12/5/2010

Forge Books, 2010 Paperback:
336 pages
ISBN-10: 0-76532-689-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-76532-689-8 Price: $14.99

Reviewed by Jeffrey Needle for the Association for Mormon Letters

(As promised, this brief review follows Russell Anderson’s fine overview of this interesting work. I will try to bring out some points that were most compelling to me.)

As mentioned in Russell Anderson’s review, Claire Avery is a pseudonym for a writing team of several Catholic sisters. Having been raised in a fundamentalist Catholic community, they’ve been motivated to explore other, similar societies. Surely some of their own experience would inform their opinion about other fundamentalist groups. And what group is more in the news than the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint, the Warren Jeffs group?

They call their fictional community “The Blood of the Lamb.” Presided over by a fearsome prophet-figure, members live in lockstep to the wishes of their Prophet. He is, after all, the only path to the Celestial Kingdom for those who unite with him and his ideal.

Rachel and Sara are daughters of a fiercely loyal patriarch named Abraham. His several wives live in a tense, competitive atmosphere where the senior wife really rules the house, always, of course, in subjection to her husband. Abraham is painted as a cruel, strict father, inclined to take his children out to a special barn used for punishment. He is depicted as a mostly robotic narcissist, who will go to any lengths to discipline his children, including burying one alive! Later scenes of him raping his daughter Rachel are hair-raising and terrifying. Can such an awful person really exist in today’s world?

Mix into the plot a young man named Luke who falls helplessly in love with Rachel. But Rachel has been claimed by another man who wishes her to become his wife. (In fact, more than a dozen men have claimed revelation that Rachel is to become his wife; only one, of course, can be her husband.) The love story between Luke and Rachel is one just brimming with pathos and possibility.

Let me preface my comments with the following thought. If you want to learn about a man, it isn’t wise to consult his ex-wife. Chances are, there is bad blood between them. It isn’t good practice to consult just one side if you’re wanting a balanced, and fair, presentation of a group’s beliefs and practices. I was therefore struck that the authors, according to the Acknowledgments, spent nearly all their time with Tapestry Against Polygamy and the HOPE Organization, two vehemently anti-polygamy groups who are certain to skew the authors’ perception of life within polygamist communities.

What emerges is a book overflowing with the kind of stereotypically awful view of polygamy that one would expect to get from its most vocal detractors. And not a word that the abuses described might be present in the most extreme circumstances, but are virtually absent in many polygamous homes.

If the goal of the authors was to produce a gripping, eminently readable tract, they succeeded. I found myself alternately captivated and repulsed by this book. No one can read the travails of these sisters and, by extension, all the children, and wives, in this insulated and dictatorial community, and not be deeply affected by them. But it takes some discernment to recognize that the plotline here is more an amalgamation of the worst of the worst, and is likely not reflected in even the most notorious of the polygamous communities.

There are some, of course, who would argue that no polygamous community can really function without a strong patriarch and the subsequent degradation and subjugation of both wives and children. However, it is simply factual that many polygamous households function in a nearly normal fashion. Yes, father has the last word, but mothers, and even children, play strong and often independent roles within the family community.

If you like a riveting story, and, in fact, an edifying and enabling ending, this is a great read. The characters are vividly drawn, the action moves along at a breakneck pace. There are really bad characters and really good characters, and then those who must learn to grow out of the trauma of their fundamentalist upbringing. In the end, the book holds out hope for those caught in such oppressive conditions.

I do fear, however, that readers of this book who are not familiar with the larger issue of polygamous families in the United States will come away thinking that all such arrangements are oppressive and inhumane. This simply doesn’t reflect the truth.

I do wonder what “Claire Avery” will produce next. It’s very likely I’ll pick up the book and give it a read. After all, good writing is good writing. I do hope, however, that they will choose a wider variety of sources for their next work. Their skilled pen and keen eye for plotting and characterization are badly needed in the current atmosphere of lukewarm writing.


Copyright 2010