polygamy

Alva, not quite fifteen, is content with the strict rules that define her life in Pineridge, the walled community where she lives with her father, his seven wives, and her twenty-nine siblings until she is caught giving her long-time crush an innocent first kiss and forced to marry a violent, fifty-year-old man.

Golden Richards, a polygamist Mormon with four wives and twenty-eight children, is building a brothel in Nevada, telling his wives it is a senior center; but his desire for a young woman on the construction site, the increasing burden of his large family, and his son's sinister plot against him contributes to his ever-increasing anxiety.

In Salt Lake City in 1885, Emmy tries to maintain a friendship with Miranda, a Gentile or non-Mormon, even though Miranda's father works for a newspaper that says polygamists like Emmy's father should be jailed.

Rebecca Musser grew up in fear, concealing her family's polygamous lifestyle from the "dangerous" outside world. In her teens she became the nineteenth wife of her people's prophet, eighty-five-year-old Rulon Jeffs, Warren Jeffs' father. After she was widowed, Warren Jeffs threatened her with remarriage so she pulled off a daring escape and sought to build a new life and family on her own terms. But by 2007 she was no longer able to stand hearing about the abuse and underage marriages still being perpetuated, ones she believed put her own sisters at risk. So she took the witness stand against Warren Jeffs, the new, self-proclaimed prophet of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Her testimony revealed the horrific scenes behind the closed doors, sending the leaders to prison for years, and Warren Jeffs for life.

Elissa Wall discusses her life growing up as a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, the trials she endured after the polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs forced her to marry her cousin at the age of fourteen, events that led to her leaving the church, and her decision to testify against Jeffs when he was brought to trial on charges of arranging marriages between adult male followers and underage girls.

Fleeing with her two daughters who have never seen the world outside of their polygamous compound, a desperate woman crashes her car in rural Oklahoma, where she finds unlikely help from a farmer grieving the loss of his wife.

Alva, not quite fifteen, is content with the strict rules that define her life in Pineridge, the walled community where she lives with her father, his seven wives, and her twenty-nine siblings until she is caught giving her long-time crush an innocent first kiss and forced to marry a violent, fifty-year-old man.

Celeste, a member of The Movement, where polygamy is the norm and women are often married off to much older men, is repulsed by her community's practices and struggles to find a way to break free of their rigid rules and expectations without bringing shame to her family.