The Wives of Short Creek: A Novel of Polygamy & 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 2002 from and about the west. Moving from the tragedy of his first novel, Grimmett has written a biting comedy about Mormon fundamentalist polygamy. A sea-sick, love-starved sailor, the intrepid Heber Dean Smith, inherits a patch of desert in the town of Short Creek, and thinks he is headed for a dry paradise with sex for the asking. Not likely. He finally marries the head man's widowed daughter, and they are happy until the Bishop decides it is time for Heber to get with the program and take two more wives-- which would be more like a hanging, to Heber's mind. 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