The Casket Maker’s Other Wife–my first novel and ongoing WIP–was inspired by my great-great-grandparents’ polygamous marriage. I descend from the second wife who emigrated to America from Switzerland after she’d joined the Mormon faith in 1869. At the time, the LDS church encouraged the practice of polygamy. For my great-great-grandmother, I think it was an answer to her prayers. Pregnant and abandoned by her first husband, she had few options. It was a different story for the first wife who would share not only her husband but the meager resources available for his first family. There’s no written record of what these two women thought of each other but we do know that the first wife chased her husband out of the cabin with a broom when he brought home my great-great-grandmother as a second wife. When we were asked to share a conversation between characters, I thought it might be interesting to eavesdrop on an early conversation between these two sister wives, Magdalena and Anna.

M: Whatever made you think that I would welcome you into my home as a sister-wife?

A: Our husband, Spar, told me this was part of God’s plan. As in the Bible when the patriarchs of old had multiple wives. This new American religion promises the restoration of all things. He told me that polygamy was being restored to the earth as God intended.

M: And you believed him?

A: I believed many other things he told me. Why not this?

M: I wonder how you could be so gullible.

A: Some would call it gullibility, others faith.

M: Though I’m twenty years older than you, we share the same marital expectations from our Swiss homeland. There, a man only had one wife. Unless she died and he married another. That was the proper, respectful, way of marriage.

A: It was.

M: So how were you convinced to do otherwise?

A: I was desperate to support my family after my first husband Jakob abandoned me and our children. Unlike him, Spar was direct, simple, reliable. When I had no one else to turn to, he looked out for me and Lisi on the trip here. Stood up for us when the immigration authorities at Castle Island were going to turn us back.

M: Why do you blush as you tell the story?

A: Because of what he told the officer who was determined to put me on the next ship heading back to Europe.

M: Which was?

A: He claimed me as his wife, Lisibeth as his child.

M: I see. Even then, before you arrived in Utah Territory, he had designs on you. Spar is not to be trusted.

A: He was doing what needed to be done, as was I when I agreed to marry him once we arrived in Salt Lake City.

M: Did either of you think about my feelings? What it would mean to me to have a sister wife thrust upon me?

A: I asked him, and he said you understood God’s will.

M: Ha! So, you see he is capable of more than one lie.

A: But you, too, converted to the Latter-day Saint faith and then you’ve lived for ten years here amongst the saints, many of whom practice polygamy. Did you think you’d avoid the requirement to be a plural wife?

M: When we immigrated to America, I chose to ignore the rumors that polygamy was a tenet of the Mormon faith. After all, the missionaries who preached the gospel to us in Bern seemed so righteous. I couldn’t imagine they would partake in such scandalous activities. Did you know that would be required of you?

A: I, too, chose to ignore the hecklers who taunted the missionaries about pursuing young girls. Plural marriage certainly wasn’t something Spar or his missionary companion preached. I wanted to believe they were good men and that the Mormons were God’s chosen people.

M: Chosen for what? To carve out a spare existence in a harsh land. Separated from the place and family they loved?

A: Like the Israelites. Wandering in the wilderness.

M: And now you’ve wandered into my life. Into my home.

A: If you’ll have me.

M: I can scarcely turn you away when you’re with child. Is it his?

A: Spar’s? No!

M: How can you be sure?

A: I barely know Elder Stöckli—Spar. And we have not . . . become man and wife in that way yet. No, this is Jakob’s child.  A child who will never know his real father. I am praying that Spar will be a better father to him than his own.

M: Perhaps I should pity you. But this life, this place has stripped away what pity I had left in my heart.

A: Is there not enough left to provide shelter to a pregnant woman and her child?

M: He’ll dig you a hole in the ground and you’ll live like the other beasts of the field. That’s what I endured when we first came here. Until then you can stay in the granary out back. Mind you, nothing comes for free here. There’s always work to be done.

A: I’m not afraid of work.

M: Not yet.