Gerald Grimmett, The Wives of Short Creek

"The cast of characters is wacky and delightful. If one mixed Robert Irvine (anyone else remember his series of mysteries featuring fallen Mormon detective Moroni Traveler?) with Tom Robbins and added a little Tony Hillerman, one might come up with Gerald Grimmett. He is a fine writer, witty and irreverent, who certainly spins an entertaining yarn."

SOUTHWEST BOOK VIEWS JULY, 2003

SUNDAY

August 24, 2003

Slapstick in print

By Martin Naparsteck

Special to the Tribune

The Wives of Short Creek

By Gerald Grimmett

Limberlost Press, $21.95

Gerald Grimmett in The Wives of Short Creek has given us a good, old-fashioned farce, and like all farces, it needs a target. His target, as the title suggests (Short Creek is the former name of Colorado City, the world's most famous polygamist community), is religious extremism.

The plot of the novel revolves around a claim by a community member that he possesses the only copy of "the last prophecy" of Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon church, and an attempt by the publisher of a Salt Lake City newspaper, the Courier & Mail, to purchase it for $2 million.

Farce, of course, is melodrama that is intended to be funny. (We often laugh at melodrama that isn't farce, but the writer doesn't want us to). As such, it deals with overdrawn plots and inflated characters -- and Grimmett's novel is no exception. When farce is a work of literature, it's slapstick in words.

Consider this sentence, a little more than half way through the novel: "If you dressed Heber in a dark blue business suit, hung a Rush Limbaugh tie around his neck, and placed him in a bank, he'd look a little like Burl Ives after a Pritikin diet."

Even outside the context of the plot, the sentence not only makes sense but provides a clear indication of the book's tone. It's both irreverent and dependent on the reader being familiar with varying cultural references (Limbaugh, Ives, the Pritikin diet).

The 75-year-old bishop of Short Creek ("15 or so . . . wives, 43 children, and 289 Grandchildren and umpteen great-grandchildren") wants the town's sheriff, Heber Dean Smith, to handle the sale of the document containing Smith's final prophecy. He also wants the sheriff to take more wives; Smith, to the bishop's chagrin, is satisfied with one, Zinny.

On the other side, C.J. Thomas, a reporter for the Courier & Mail, "the only anti-establishmentarian newspaper between Denver and San Francisco" and rival of "the church owned Deseret Call," is sent by the publisher to deliver the money. Thomas isn't real happy about the assignment, having more fun doing other things (when we first meet him he's with "A butt-naked coed . . . He'd picked up . . . that evening at a Jazz game").

There are varying subplots, a key one involving a woman who believes "being a wife to a good Mormon was as boring as sorting socks" and that the culture she's a part of believes "to be childless was a sin akin to drunkenness" and that "barren women were to be pitied."

And there's Rose Lee, who was divorced after five years of marriage by "Bishop-to-be DeKay LaMott." The problems started when Rose Lee received what DeKay called "filthy pornography." She had "absent-mindedly signed a petition [for the Arizona Women's Alliance] in the Kingman Mall, having no idea what it was for, but the solicitor had a cute butt . . . That act had got her on a mailing list. To make ends meet, AWA sold the mailing list which fell into the hands of some very unsavory companies who offered mail order marital aids, discount phone sex, and some pretty racy bed gear."

As is typical of literary farce (think of Joseph Heller's Catch 22 or Shakespeare's "A Midsummer's Night Dream") subtlety isn't a virtue here. The farce is effective or not effective much the same way as a stand-up comedian's routine. The jokes accumulate, and even if one isn't particularly funny the audience laughs because of the momentum built up by previous lines.

Humor, of course, is also like beauty, in the eye of the beholder. By the time, close to the end of the book, we learn exactly what the final prophecy of Joseph Smith says, some readers may be disappointed because it's not the least bit farcical. It's serious but certain to displease both devout members of the Mormon church and residents of Colorado City.

For Grimmett The Wives of Short Creek is both a continuation of and a significant departure from the themes he explored in his 2001 novel, The Ferry Women, which was narrated by a fictional wife of John D. Lee, one of the leaders of the gang of murderers who killed more than 120 men, women, and children at the Mountain Meadows massacre in 1857. That novel was a serious and convincing exploration of polygamy (Lee had 15 wives) and the effect it had on one of the wives.

This new novel is, of course, intended to make us laugh. And the laughs should be guffaws, not snickers or quiet and knowing smiles. This is farce.

-----

Martin Naparsteck reviews books from and about the West for The Salt Lake Tribune.

--------------------

There are few novels that make me laugh out loud. Fewer still that make me want me to turn the page. Great read, Comical, insightful, historically researched. Arthur Bonner, Providence RI

Mr. Grimmett's second novel is immensely entertaining, witty and brings to life a polygamist culture still alive and well on the Utah/Arizona border There are few novels that make me laugh out loud. Fewer still that want me to turn the page. This fills the bill on both counts. Although a work of fiction, it falls squarely in reality. Grimmett's insight into Mormonism and the polygamist cult is hugely insightful and brings a unique perspective rarely achieved. It's long overdue and a tribute to Grimmett that he's tackled such a notorious subject that's pushed in the shadows of Utah like a decaying carcass. I do not hesitate a second in recommending this novel to anyone interested in Utah history because it is living, breathing history -- now.

Reviewer: J. Cannon, a wildlife preserve manager from Utah. , July 7, 2003