Media Review: Season of Sacrifice

I had the opportunity to read Tristi Pinkston’s latest historical novel, Season of Sacrifice as soon as it was released. When I received my copy, I was immediately struck by the gorgeous cover photo of Hole-in-the-Rock, and wasn’t disappointed in a story as deep as the canyons that serve as setting. This historical novel is set in Wales and the badlands of Utah, and tells the story of Benjamin Perkins’ emigration to Utah, his romance with his wife Mary Ann, and also the story of Mary Ann’s younger sister Sarah, who leaves a handsome beau in Wales to follow her family and settle in Utah.

After settling in Cedar City Utah, Benjamin was asked by Church leaders to travel with an expedition to settle in the San Juan region of Utah, to create a settlement that would be a buffer and stronghold for the early Mormon Church. Their trek was centered on the hopes of facilitating good relations between the Mormon pioneers and the Indians. Benjamin and Mary Ann ask Sarah to travel with them and help with their children, on a journey through the harsh wilderness that is intended to last only six weeks. They face trial after trial, bringing horses, covered wagons, and families through narrow canyons of rock and down near drop-off steep cliffs, an arduous journey that turns out to last six months.

When they reach their destination, Benjamin is called to take a second wife, and feels impressed that his second wife should be Sarah. This book explores the intricacies of emotion within and between the characters-Benjamin feeling called by God to do something he knows will injure his beloved’s heart. Mary Ann feeling betrayed by her husband and jealous of her much-younger sister, but still obedient and faithful to her marriage covenants, and Sarah, torn between her love for, and loyalty to her sister and her own spiritual impression that this is truly the path the Lord has planned for her life. Pinkston does an excellent job winding the poignancy of emotion of all three characters into the historical facts shared through family heirloom journals of the principal players in the story.

While reading, I found myself wondering which aspects of the story were factual, as many of the stories of the trials and successes of the pioneers traveling through the harsh Utah badlands were touching stories of human strength, as well as near impossible feats of physical probability. Pinkston provided the answers, she includes appendices detailing which elements of the story are factual and which details were her own as well as historical information about what happened to the Perkins families after the end of the novel. Pinkston stays true to the history available--all the stories of how they engineered loaded wagons down sheer cliffs were true--and ad-libs only the details that are peripheral to the story.

Pinkston tells the story of Benjamin Perkins’ two families despite heated controversy over the issue of polygamy—controversy that created obstacles for Pinkston in publishing her book. Just this week as I am writing this (April 8, although this review won’t be posted until sometime later in the month) the government took into protective custody over 400 children from a polygamist compound of the Fundamental Latter Day Saint (FLDS) sect in Texas, as well as over 100 women who were seeking refuge from the oppression they face as plural wives. And a recent episode of Oprah discussed not only the Warren Jeffs/Colorado City, Arizona issues of oppression of women and exploitation of children, but also the polygamist sect in Centennial Park, Arizona in which families capitalize on polygamy to enable massive families to live in decadent estates with multiple professional incomes and family-subsidized child care. With one husband and multiple wives working in professional careers while another wife or two cares for the children, together the groups amass considerable fortunes and enjoy lavish lifestyles. Meanwhile, HBO glamorizes polygamy into a sexcapade laden with jealousy and rival wives on the hit show Big Love. Yes, polygamy is hugely controversial right now.

On a recent work related trip to Michigan, my husband was asked (on hearing that he was from Utah) whether he is Mormon. When he answered that he was, the questioner projected a mixture of curiosity and disdain while he probed further, asking whether Paul has more than one wife. Outside of Utah, many people are simply unaware that polygamy has not been practiced or sanctioned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for over a hundred years. People still associate polygamy primarily with the LDS/Mormon church even though any LDS members found to be practicing polygamy are excommunicated. The religious sects that currently practice polygamy are not affiliated with the LDS/Mormon church even though some, like the FLDS church (or “Mormon Fundamentalists”) have a similar name, but a very different set of doctrines.

Pinkston’s book allows one to compare the differences between polygamy as practiced by the early LDS Mormons with what we see in the media. For the few LDS members who practiced polygamy (about 3% of the total membership at that time), it was not about financial gain or sexual conquest. A man like Benjamin Perkins often supported and maintained separate households for each of his wives--not an easy feat when farming in the harsh Utah desert—and often, like Benjamin, had serious reservations about taking on plural wives. At that time and circumstance in the Mormon settlements, there were many more women than men, women who were not only unable to support themselves alone, but were also vulnerable to being kidnapped or assaulted by transients or Indians. Polygamy served a protective purpose, and an adaptive one-- the offspring of polygamist families helped create a balance in numbers of men and women in subsequent generations.

In contrast, polygamist systems in the context of our current culture do not balance and support the current stratification of gender in the population. For example, in the case of Colorado City where very young girls are expected to enter into marriage with older, socially powerful men, the adolescent boys are placed in a situation as rivals with their elders and religious leaders. Girls raised in polygamist sects and forced to marry young are not the only ones who face social and emotional issues. Sometimes forgotten in the drama are the adolescent boys in such a society, who are often abandoned by their culture, or simply forced to remain single due to lack of social or religious power in arranging marriages with young women in their own peer/age groups.

Ultimately as I was reading Season of Sacrifice, I was struck with the impression that for these people, polygamy represented a heart-wrenching challenge to all involved, but through which was a refiner’s fire. If all people were as committed to their beliefs as Benjamin, Mary Ann, and Sarah Perkins proved to be, and demonstrated such a level of obedience and sacrifice for their beliefs, there would be a depth of maturity in our daily life that would be unprecedented in our contemporary society. Tristi Pinkston has shared that she felt deeply that the stories of Benjamin, Sarah, and Mary Ann needed to be told, and has dedicated the story to them. I think she did them justice with this poignant story.