In the latest from the author of The Personal History of Rachel DuPree, a Mormon woman living in a tiny community in the Utah Territory of 1888 faces tough decisions when a fellow Mormon shows up at her door looking for shelter from the federal government that he says is pursuing him as a practitioner of polygamy, a crime.
Weisgarber...has created a multilayered book that features conflicts both external and internal ... The Glovemaker is well-researched. It weaves in the early history of the Mormon church ... She does so in a way that fleshes out the characters and gives context to their anxieties. It never feels like an info dump. It can be hard to catch the book’s rhythm at first ... The characters’ moral calculations also require some patience; great questions aren’t settled in a paragraph. The Glovemaker is a quiet novel, but a rewarding one. It’s just right for a winter night and worthy of some rumination.
Weisgarber...makes effective use of early Mormon history to explore moral choice, and compression in language, setting, number of characters, and chronology lends this tale an unusual force.
