Just one problem: What book was I going to write? How would I tell her story? And how to make it relevant to today? It took a long, unsettling year of research before I could begin actually writing. Then one night I woke up literally sat up in bed and I knew I had to write this book.

I found myself torn between the novel I was working on and a nearly overwhelming desire to throw myself into the world of Ann Eliza and polygamy. As I read more about Ann Eliza Young, I recognized how remarkable she was: intelligent, outspoken, declarative, contradictory, somewhat unreliable, a tad melodramatic, very beautiful (and a little bit vain) she possessed a number of traits that can make a character in a novel unpredictable, and therefore interesting.

The 19th Wife? Who was that? What does it even mean to be a 19th wife? After a few years I started looking into that question. And so for a few years, while my attention was elsewhere, that nickname the 19th Wife continued to ring in my head. Needless to say, my writer's ears stood up.Īt the time I was working on another novel, one that I would ultimately put aside to write The 19th Wife. I told her I'd never heard of her and she gave a me brief introduction. History geek that I am, one afternoon I was gabbing with her about all sorts of 19th-century arcana when she mentioned the 19th Wife. I had hired a scholar a specialist in 19th century women's history to write a set of endnotes for a classic we were reissuing. I first heard about Ann Eliza Young seven years ago while editing a book for the Modern Library. How did you first encounter the story of Ann Eliza Young, the 19th wife of Brigham Young, and what drew you to her story? David Ebershoff discusses The 19th Wife, which explores the controversialĮarly life of the Church of Latter-day Saints and in particular Ann Eliza Young,ġ9th wife to Brigham Young, who was instrumental in ending the legal practice of

The 19th wife by david ebershoff