A Bad Deal in Mormon Land

The summary implied that this would be primarily Ilsa's story, but instead it was told from a wide cast of narrators, changing with each short chapter. While a glut of POV characters and frequent perspective switching can sometimes muddy a story or make it hard to get into, A Bad Deal in Mormon Land pulled it off. All of the characters and their various plot lines were carefully interwoven, and access to each character's internal thoughts always served a purpose not only in their journey and in deepening their character, but also in adding nuance to the other narrators.

Ilsa ended up honestly being one of the less compelling characters of the bunch by being pretty straightforwardly what she was presented to be. She remained a show more down-on-her-luck, fake spirit medium with generally good intentions, but not so far as to get in the way of a payday for the length of the story. Many of the other characters had much more inherent internal conflict. Diantha Marsh was part of a plural marriage and still cared deeply for her husband despite coming to oppose the practice and her husband's intentions to revive it, and loved Mormonism despite her distaste for its general treatment of women. Francie Bream’s disgust with the violence powerful men could get away with led her to embrace violence herself and ultimately confront the unpleasantness of learning that the people she hoped to help didn't see her as a heroic vigilante but just as another violent, dangerous person. Others offered uncomfortable glimpses into their humanity that elided simple ideas of the roles they filled and made it hard not to feel a conflicting mix of emotions for them, like the trio of sad, lonely little men– Adam, Roger Marsh, and Gilbert Snaith– who played powerful villains in other characters' stories while being pitiable and vulnerable from their own perspectives. I was taken with all these characters; regardless of how quickly or slowly their strands of the story moved, they always kept my attention with their messy, complicated relationships and internal lives.

The only letdown in the book was the ending. After the plot lines converged, it was a rush to the end. I was left unsatisfied with many characters' fates, their stories cut off rather than resolved. And some plot threads were simply left hanging. show less

With full knowledge that most of the Western United States, not just Utah, is “Mormon Country,” some readers may not appreciate the depth and honesty, especially in its treatment of religious extremism, gender-specific survival, and marital fraud as forms of performance and reinvention. A summer read filled with manufactured authority and varied metaphors about how organized religion shapes masculine perception, it's humorous and will likely resonate with women who know that survival requires improvisation, wit, and emotional calculation. It's also a modern exploration of the history of erotic and religious economics, institutional hypocrisy, and survival through performance. Historical facts related to the LDS Church demonstrate show more that religion has always been a form of power and that it can be used to destabilize and to build systems that align with radical ideals. A quick read with historical grounding, religious mythology, lots of spectacle, and the politics of secularism. show less

A Bad Deal in Mormon Land is a fun character study of several people in Utah just after the turn of the century. Their quests for power and recognition are driven largely by religious structures, whether through conservative or progressive Mormonism, the spiritualism of the day, and other isms such as capitalism, feminism, etc.
I particularly enjoyed the way that all of the various character arcs intertwined and came to their conclusions at the end because there were many points where it did not seem that they were going to interact with each other.
Short chapters kept the story moving when it was threatening to slow down. Plus the quirky characters and dry humor made this very entertaining to read.
Thank you to Librarything and Type show more Eighteen Books for the ARC. show less