Search - The 19th Wife

I'm one of the rare people that didn't enjoy this book at all. I didn't even bother finishing it, placing it back on PBS almost a week after receiving it. I felt Ebershoff was a gruff author, writing at a 6th grade level and in a very choppy manner. While there was definitely a story to be told here, it merited refined words written in more eloquent ways. Neiter refinement nor eloquence can be found in this book. Save yourself the time and look for a better book to read.

Ebershoff manages to straddle multiple stories, centuries and leading characters without leaving the reader behind. All voices feel authentic and it is easy to let go and be carried away by the quirky circumstances of a world I could never understand. While it is not out and out historical fact, I am that much closer to understanding this totally foreign religion without fear and just a little self-indulgent anger. It is, after all, a novel.

A superb read through and through!

This book kept me spell bound to the end. I loved the historical fiction sections because there were so many different ways of moving the story along. Ebershoff uses many different styles of writing including memoires, newspaper articles, diary entries, etc. It kept me guessing until the end of how the two stories (one historical, the other modern) would come together in the end. I couldn't put the book down.

I only made it through about 150 pages before finally giving it up, which is rare for me. I'll usually read a book through the end hoping it will get better but I just couldn't do it with this one. I found the writing style with the two story lines very disjointed and hard to follow. I would be just getting into the one character/story and the it would abruptly switch to the other and it would take me several pages to get into that one then it would switch again. Plus there were some odd newspaper articles and Wiki pages thrown in that were really distracting. Very strange book.

I loved this book! I thought the stories intertwined so smoothly, and were easy to keep track of. This book kept my interest until the very end. I'm not usually a historical fiction reader, but this book not only was interesting to me but it also got me interested in the beginnings of the Mormon church, which led me to more great books.

This was an interesting book, taking you through the founding of the Mormon Church and the implementation of polygamy through the eyes of a reluctant family, while also following a modern story of a murder in a compound. The author keeps you interested in both plots, and shows a somewhat scathing portrait of the struggles of polygamy in its early days and dark side of more recent extreme groups of polygamists.