You figure a title like this has to be ironic, even sarcastic. For most of us the notion of a polygamist Mormon patriarch -- one possessed of four wives and 28 children -- probably conjures a despotic control freak. But this book is simply and sincerely titled. The protagonist Golden Richards is a sweet, bewildered, and thoroughly overwhelmed man.
Constantly fleeing and hiding from the demands and power plays of his wives and a melee of kids in three different houses, fighting to revive his failing construction business, deeply wounded by grief and guilt over the accidental death of a daughter and the still-birth of a son, he finds himself attracted to another woman who clearly needs help and attention but is precisely the wrong person for him to be seeing.
Apart from Golden, the narrative most often inhabits the minds of Rusty, a troubled 11-year-old lost in the pack, and Trish, the fourth and youngest wife. We get plenty of back stories along the way: the origins of Golden's father Royal, the courtship of his first wife Beverly, critical past moments in the history of this odd, sprawling family.
There are also wonderful miniature portraits -- of the true power brokers and go-getters in the local Mormon community, other polygamists like Ervil LeBaron who give the church a bad name, unattached mothers hoping to become Golden's fifth spouse, the odd books that characters read in hiding (from the romance novel, To Love a Scoundrel, to How to Derail a Train With Common Household Items), and the sweetest and wisest sheriff you could imagine.
The book reads easily, with much humor and occasional stabbing sorrow. Udall unobtrusively slips in a broad spectrum of the landscape, from Hispanic tenants with their drugs and mescal, to Nevada brothels, survivalist bomb shelters, and nuclear tests.
There are astounding plot turns, but not like those of a thriller that smack hard yet feel weightless; these surprises settle in and make you say, "but of course!" Udall truly does make this unusual situation feel quite normal. He makes you identify with everyone, and much to your surprise, sympathize with and even root for his protagonist.
"[T]his ... was the basic truth they all chose to live by: that love was no finite commodity. That it was not subject to the cruel reckoning of addition and subtraction, that to give to one did not necessarily mean to take from another; that the heart, in its infinite capacity--even the confused and cheating heart of the man in front of her, even the paltry thing now clenched and faltering inside her own chest--could open itself to all who would enter, like a house with windows and doors thrown wide, like the heart of God itself, vast and accommodating and holy, a mansion of rooms without number, full of multitudes without end."
I don't know how true-to-life this story may be. But it feels right, it reads beautifully and often hilariously, and I liked it an awful lot.
