{"id":39537,"date":"2015-09-09T11:11:30","date_gmt":"2015-09-09T15:11:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/?p=39537"},"modified":"2021-06-04T11:33:11","modified_gmt":"2021-06-04T15:33:11","slug":"bishops-wife-mette-ivie-harrison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/bishops-wife-mette-ivie-harrison\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bishop’s Wife [A Linda Wallheim Mystery, Book 1] by Mette Ivie Harrison"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bishop's<\/a>Here in my temporary exile in the Beehive State, I remain fascinated by\u00a0the religion that dominates\u00a0my current location.\u00a0In a moment of ironic timing, as I was wandering\u00a0the many surrounding mountains with narrator Kirsten Potter stuck in the ears, this passage stuck: “Whenever friends from other parts of the country come to Utah, the first thing they mention is the feeling they get from the mountains. Some people\u00a0feel oppressed by them. Others feel safe, like they are wrapped in a cocoon.”<\/p>\n

The same could certainly be said of any religion\u00a0\u2013 and holds especially true for\u00a0the eponymous bishop’s wife in this adult novel debut by award-winning young adult writer\u00a0Mette Ivie Harrison<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As the wife of a respected Mormon bishop, Linda Wallheim is the unofficial “mother” of the ward, since her husband Kurt is considered its father: “that meant there were five hundred people who were under [her] care.” Among that enormous brood, Linda becomes enmeshed\u00a0where she shouldn’t be, with a young man whose wife has abandoned him and their 5-year-old daughter, with an older woman who is about to lose her elderly husband who is agitated on his deathbed with an untold secret, and with a troubled husband seeking advice on how to make his wife “feel as special as she really is.”<\/p>\n

The mother of five grown sons, Linda understandably continues to mourn the\u00a0loss of her stillborn daughter. Young Kelly, separated from her own mother, grabs Linda’s\u00a0heart and won’t let go, making Linda\u00a0more determined to find out what might have happened to missing Carrie. Lacking close women friends, Linda’s relationship with Anna whose widowhood is inevitable grows quickly, as Anna reveals her concerns about being her husband’s second wife as\u00a0his eternal\u00a0bond\u00a0remains with\u00a0his first with whom he shared only a few years in comparison to their many decades together. And, with growing suspicions\u00a0of abuse within their tight community, Linda can’t help but\u00a0be initially uneasy about young Brad’s distress over his depressed, medicated wife.<\/p>\n

Linda’s maternal instincts\u00a0\u2013 as well as her sense of justice, especially in a community so dominated by men-centric rules\u00a0\u2013 leads her\u00a0to ignore the expectations, requests, demands to uphold her position as a devout Mormon woman, even as she is maligned for her transgressions [she\u00a0slaps the bully who calls his 5-year-old grandchild a ‘whore,’ is herself called a ‘whore’ in response, and is asked to apologize by her bishop husband \u2013 really??!!]. Regardless of personal cost, Linda is determined to tend and protect her flock.\u00a0Mysterious phone calls, a fading dress possibly covered in blood, a buried hammer entangled with what might be human hair, the unreliable memories of a small child, will all eventually reveal heinous tragedies within a community circumscribed\u00a0by rules and regulations that members believe are commanded\u00a0by God.<\/p>\n

Perhaps even more intriguing than her\u00a0fiction, however,\u00a0is Harrison’s\u00a0own life. A self-described “active Mormon,” Harrison thoughtfully, openly\u00a0discusses her own spiritual struggles on her website’s “Mormon Page<\/a>.” She reveals that writing\u00a0Wife<\/em> was “a part of this attempt to believe again, trying to conceive of a Mormon woman whom I might one day be,” admitting that her fictional character “is more faithful than I am at this point in my life.” Even more than her protagonist, Harrison\u00a0\u2013 a Princeton PhD who completed a Masters by\u00a0age 19, a former professor who is a\u00a0Huffington Post\u00a0<\/a><\/em>blogger<\/a>, a triathlete mother of five\u00a0\u2013 is a fascinating personality to get to know as she examines and challenges dogma, doctrine, doing good, and not always being right.<\/p>\n

Yes, Linda is already contracted to make a comeback in a\u00a0future\u00a0novel. Harrison divulges\u00a0in an interview “some ideas,” including “black people and the Mormon priesthood [men of African descent were not allowed to be ordained until 1978] … the legacy of polygamy, and …\u00a0LGBTQ Mormon youth, who have the highest rate of suicide in the country, and who are being kicked out of supposedly loving church homes.” Linda is sure to\u00a0prove again she’s\u00a0no shy, silent bishop’s wife\u00a0\u2013 and even more kudos to her creator for making her so!<\/p>\n

Readers<\/strong>: Adult<\/p>\n

Published<\/strong>: 2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here in my temporary exile in the Beehive State, I remain fascinated by\u00a0the religion that dominates\u00a0my current location.\u00a0In a moment of ironic timing, as I was wandering\u00a0the many surrounding mountains with narrator Kirsten Potter stuck in the ears, this passage stuck: “Whenever friends from other…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39536,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,81,6,60],"tags":[6575,6608,75,10,123,458,13,6576,129,212,216,39,55,42,6846],"class_list":["post-39537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-adult-readers","category-audio","category-fiction","category-nonethnic-specific","tag-bishops-wife","tag-bookdragon","tag-death","tag-family","tag-illness","tag-kirsten-potter","tag-love","tag-mette-ivie-harrison","tag-mother-daughter-relationship","tag-murder","tag-mystery","tag-parent-child-relationship","tag-religious-differences","tag-series","tag-series-linda-wallheim"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Bishop's Wife [A Linda Wallheim Mystery, Book 1] by Mette Ivie Harrison - 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