The Wives of Short Creek-A Novel of Polygamy and Prophecy

The Wives of Short Creek is author Gerald Grimmett's second published novel. His first novel, The Ferry Woman, a novel of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, from the small, but highly regarded Limberlost Press, was received with critical acclaim, and selected by the Salt Lake Tribune as the Best Book of 2001 from and about the west. The first edition of 2,500 trade paper copies was sold within six months, and a second edition is planned.

Moving from the tragedy of his first novel, Grimmett has written a biting comedy about Mormon fundamentalist polygamy from the point of view of a seasick, love-starved sailor—the intrepid Heber Dean Smith. Heber Dean inherits a patch of Mojave desert in the town of Short Creek, and thinks he is headed for a dry paradise with sex for the asking. Not likely.

Heber eventually gains the trust of the secretive community, and marries Bishop Reuben Alldred-Price’s widowed daughter Zinny. Heber and Zinny are happy until the Bishop decides it is time for Heber to take more wives to bring some balance to the demographics. The Bishop selects for Heber two prospective wives who are so bizarre in their behavior Heber Dean feels like the weddings would more like a hanging. Heber really loves Zinny and monogamy, but he also needs a lot of help from his hidden whisky still to get through his trials.

Central to this bitter-sweet comedy, is a search and chase for a secret last prophecy which it is hoped will legitimize their ongoing practice of plural wives, and in which the Prophet Joseph Smith Jr. foresees the main streaming apostasy of the huge Mormon Church in Salt Lake City. The church in Salt Lake would like nothing better than to burn and bury this purported prophecy, so they send their minions to thwart Heber’s mission by any means necessary. This leads to the novel’s climax in the infamous War of the Sticks. The implicit condemnation of polygamy is self-evident, but so is the fun.

To complicate Sheriff Heber Dean’s life, the fictional Arizona Women’s Alliance instigates a cunning infiltration of Short Creek by the beautiful Rose Lee, a bitter, recently excommunicated mainstream Mormon. Her mission is to pave the way to free the wives of Short Creek from their slavery and degradation, and to bring to them the breathy zest of freedom from their bondage in the strictly closed, Patriarchal society of Short Creek.