A New York Times bestseller: "Udall masterfully portrays the hapless foibles and tragic yearnings of our fellow humans." —San Francisco Chronicle Golden Richards, husband to four wives, father to twenty-eight children, is having the mother of all midlife crises. His construction business is failing, his family has grown into an overpopulated mini-dukedom beset with insurrection and rivalry, and he is done in with grief: due to the accidental death of a daughter and the stillbirth of a son, he has come to doubt the capacity of his own heart. Brady Udall, one of our finest American fiction writers, tells a tragicomic story of a deeply faithful man who, crippled by grief and the demands of work and family, becomes entangled in an affair that threatens to destroy his family’s future. Like John Irving and Richard Yates, Udall creates characters that engage us to the fullest as they grapple with the nature of need, love, and belonging. Beautifully written, keenly observed, and ultimately redemptive, The Lonely Polygamist is an unforgettable story of an American family—with its inevitable dysfunctionality, heartbreak, and comedy—pushed to its outer limits.

A tragicomic story of a deeply faithful man who, crippled by grief and the demands of work and family, becomes entangled in an affair that threatens to destroy his family's future.

Golden Richards is a normal dad. But with four wives and twenty eight children there just isn't enough of him to go around. Unbeknownst to his wives, Golden has taken a construction job on a Nevada brothel. Lying to cover his tracks, beset by familial rivalry on all sides, he seeks relief in the arms of his boss's wife.To put it simply this is the story of a polygamist who has an affair. But there is much more to it than that. Generous, wise and moving The Lonely Polygamist is a bittersweet tale of family, love and belonging.

Faith, I tell them, is a mystery, elusive to many, and never easy to explain. Sweeping and lyrical, spellbinding and unforgettable, David Ebershoff’s The 19th Wife combines epic historical fiction with a modern murder mystery to create a brilliant novel of literary suspense. It is 1875, and Ann Eliza Young has recently separated from her powerful husband, Brigham Young, prophet and leader of the Mormon Church. Expelled and an outcast, Ann Eliza embarks on a crusade to end polygamy in the United States. A rich account of a family’s polygamous history is revealed, including how a young woman became a plural wife. Soon after Ann Eliza’s story begins, a second exquisite narrative unfolds–a tale of murder involving a polygamist family in present-day Utah. Jordan Scott, a young man who was thrown out of his fundamentalist sect years earlier, must reenter the world that cast him aside in order to discover the truth behind his father’s death. And as Ann Eliza’s narrative intertwines with that of Jordan’ s search, readers are pulled deeper into the mysteries of love and faith. Praise for The 19th Wife “This exquisite tour de force explores the dark roots of polygamy and its modern-day fruit in a renegade cult . . . Ebershoff brilliantly blends a haunting fictional narrative by Ann Eliza Young, the real-life 19th “rebel” wife of Mormon leader Brigham Young, with the equally compelling contemporary narrative of fictional Jordan Scott, a 20-year-old gay man. . . . With the topic of plural marriage and its shattering impact on women and powerless children in today's headlines, this novel is essential reading for anyone seeking understanding of the subject.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Half Apache and mostly orphaned, the adventures of Edgar Presley Mint begin on an Arizona reservation at the age of seven, when the mailman's jeep accidentally runs over his head. Shunted from the hospital to a reform school to a Mormon foster family, comedy and trouble accompany Edgar - the irresistible innocent who never truly loses heart, and whose quest for the mailman leads him to an unexpected home. This riveting picaresque novel has become an international best-seller.

A riveting memoir of life inside one of North America's most notorious polygamous cults.

Exploding with an unsettling exuberance, Brady Udall's stories traverse a geography of lost love, fragmented lives, and satisfying revenge. Shimmering with life, these eleven stories literally let loose--and leave readers with a raw yet romantic vision of the men and women in today's still-wild West.

Two’s company... five is definitely a crowd! The Polygamist weaves a tale of four women whose lives become intertwined when they all fall for a wealthy banking magnate Jonasi Gomora. Seemingly indomitable, and oozing money, power and sex appeal, Jonasi is about to complicate all their lives forever. Joyce is pampered wife number one who lives in the lap of luxury. She believes she has the perfect marriage until Matipa rears her coiffed head. Matipa is the glamorous mistress every married woman hates. Her driving ambition is to usurp Joyce’s role as Jonasi’s lover and wife. Essie is Jonasi’s best-kept secret — the second wife no one knows about. She cared for Jonasi long before he became the man he is, and plays the role of second fiddle knowing he’ll always come back to her. Lindani’s main goal in life is to upgrade from girlfriend to wife. When she meets Jonasi, she thinks all her problems have been answered, not knowing they have only just begun... Take a journey with these four women and get caught up in the explosive havoc of marriage to a multitude!

For decades, polygamous families have been forced to hide their lifestyle. But this first-ever memoir of a polygamous family is a riveting inside look at a world we can hardly imagine, revealing the extraordinary workings of one family’s day-to-day life. In this intimate story, the Dargers explain why they chose this path despite the pressures of keeping their relationships secret and the jealousy and personal challenges that naturally ensue; why they believe polygamy should be an accepted lifestyle; and, ultimately, why they hope that by revealing their way of life in public, laws that criminalize polygamy might change. Despite the risk of legal action, the Dargers know that it’s time to counteract Hollywood’s sensational interpretation and the general public’s misunderstanding of polygamy with the truth.

Two sisters unite to survive a traumatic upbringing—from absentee parents to a wilderness camp for troubled teens—in this “relentless and spooky” (Joy Williams) debut novel from an essential new voice. “A story that’s so weird, it has to be true. . . . Keeps our attention in a chokehold.”—The New York Times ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Good Housekeeping “When the Juvenile Transportation Services come for you in the night in a preordained kidnapping, complete with an unmarked van and husky guardsmen you can’t outmatch, you have been sold for a promise.” A young woman thinks she has escaped her past only to discover that she’s been hovering on its edges all along: She and her younger sister bide their time in a dilapidated warehouse in a desolate town north of New York City; their parents settled there with dreams of starting an art commune. But after the girls’ father vanishes, all traces of stability disappear for the family, and the girls retreat into strange worlds of their own mythmaking and isolation. As the sisters both try to survive their increasingly dark and dangerous adolescences, they break apart and reunite repeatedly, orbiting each other like planets. Both endure stints at the Veld Center, a wilderness camp where troubled teenage girls are sent as a last resort, and both emerge more deeply warped by the harsh outdoor survival experiences they must endure and the attempts by staff to break them down psychologically. With a mesmerizing voice and uncanny storytelling style, this is a remarkable debut about two women who must struggle to understand the bonds that link them and how their traumatic history will shape who they choose to become as adults.