The Lonely Polygamist by Brady Udall

After reading reviews of this in about five different magazines it became clear that this novel was the buzz worthy novel of the moment. Interestingly in many of these reviews the author wanted to stress and have people be sure to know that he had started this book long before the TV series Big Love came to be.

The book was good. It tells the story of a man who finds himself with four wives, 28 children, a business that is failing and in the process of building a brothel and having feelings for another woman. Much of this story is superficial and for me at least was uneven.

Some small parts of the book however were extremely moving. A flashback telling about the death of one of the children a few years earlier, an afflicted child with cerebal palsy that a special relationship with her father Golden Richards who dies in a tragic accident. Another child, the clear misfit in a family of 28 children in a plea for attention has an accident that will have long lasting repurcussions for the family. After reading both of these segments I went and checked on my children in bed and kissed them while they slept.

An interesting backstory is also of the nuclear bomb testing in the Arizona and Nevada desert in the middle of the century and how it had long lasting effects on the lives on the inhabitants.

Fiction is hard for me to be embrace at this point in my life. I am glad I read this but it was only good..it was not the Great American Novel. The character of the patriarch was not one easy to embrace. Were it not for the child of trouble named Rusty and the trials of the 4th wife Trish the book would be devoid of embraceable characters. This is a flaw that is hard to repair in a 500 page book.