The Sound of Gravel, Flatiron Books, 2015.
It’s dark outside and in the beginning of The Sound of Gravel. The polygamous cult in which Wariner is raised, 200 miles south of Juarez, Mexico, is a land of rural beauty and grinding poverty. Living off the land is not exactly working for the 30-odd families of LeBaron, the town in which author Ruth Wariner grows up. And some of the people who are living there, particularly the writer’s polygamous stepfather, seem a little short-handed in the conscience department.
Wariner’s doughty mother, with five children, two of whom have serious developmental delays, stressing the family’s scant resources, is deeply loved by her children. But they do not understand why she repeatedly forgives her husband for taking her public assistance money, or beating her.
When the mother takes the children back to California to see her parents for a visit, the grandparents try to stop her from returning to her “marriage,” which, it is pointed out at various times in the book, is not a legal entity. She is the second wife and was married in the church only.
Wariner paints a scene between her mother and mother’s parents: “Makes me sick to think about all those old men bringin’ so many little babies into the world,” Gramdma shook her head furiously. “All those little bastards runnin’ round all over the place with no one lookin after ’em–“
But this type of argument matters little to Wariner’s mother. Procreation is the highest goal for these polygamous wives of the Church of the Firstborn, a fundamentalist Mormon sect. Families of ten or twelve children are common. And to procreate, you need a man.
Wariner’s mother returns frequently to a religious argument about the centrality of polygamy to the families at LeBaron. If you don’t live polygamy, God is going to deny you the pleasures of the afterlife. For her, there is no real question of leaving her situation, despite the poverty, violence, abuse of children and women and safety issues that plague the family.
As the story unfolds, the reader is drawn in with sympathy for the mother and her brood. And yet the conclusion that the sorrows and hardships the children face are mostly created by their parents is unavoidable.
Because I believe this book is eminently worth reading, I will not give details that would spoil the high drama of this memoir, but I will say that, like Tara Westover’s memoir, Educated, the book is almost as much a historical document as a personal story. The fact that people voluntarily live as these people must to survive and rebel against “Babylon” (modern American values, such as TV, packaged breakfast cereal, and building codes) is a study on human nature.
If you’ve ever driven past a trailer park with derelict cars outside, and wondered how this happens to people, you might read this book.
For me, one of the most poignant images of the entire story is Wariner’s mother reading a romance novel, which she apparently did frequently. The idea emerges in the reader’s mind that this woman felt that the only way she could get love was through her plural marriage. Desire for sexual love and romance is further suggested by the resentment of plural wives over where their husband visited on any given night, or who’s the “favorite” at the moment.
What emerges then is a resounding question: Are there some family structures and belief practices that are just wrong? Secondarily, is this type of cult behavior a sub-variety of addiction? Wariner’ story leads one to conclude that she thinks polygamy is morally destructive from its inception. That’s the conclusion I think most readers will draw as well.
