Recommended by a friend - I think she wanted someone else to read it and share her horror, it is pretty horrific. I do not read "true crime" because the dimension of reality - real people, real events, real places - takes it far, far beyond my comfort zone. I like fictional crime, thank you very much. And while most of the story takes place in Alaska, its beginnings were in Fort Worth, Texas, and another stage was in north central New Mexico. Too close to home.
Robert Hale, who later reinvented himself as Papa Pilgrim leading his godly family including many children, started his career by getting his high school sweetheart pregnant. running away and marrying her, and murdering her - even before the baby was born. In Texas, as in much of the world, money talks and he walked away from the whole thing.
He did not reform. He found another young teenaged bride and set forth on a course of psychological and physical abuse toward her - and their eighteen or nineteen children. And when his daughters got old enough - I don't think I need to go into detail there. And all this in the name of God - I don't use the term blasphemy very often, but this seems an appropriate time.
He also made a very public issue of flauting the law and --- I don't want to talk about this book any more. At least he died in prison - but it was much too late in his life to even begin to be adequate punishment for what he did. I guess that is up to a higher authority.
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