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 the community they call LeBaron. And some of the people who are living there seem a little short-handed in the conscience department. Particularly the writer’s polygamous stepfather.
That’s an understatement. How much of one you can’t know, really, without reading the book.
Portrait of Polygamy
Wariner’s doughty mother is deeply loved by her five children. Two of them have serious developmental delays which stress the family’s scant resources. But the family does not understand why she repeatedly forgives her husband for ignoring their needs, preferring his other wives, or beating her.
To say Wariner’s mother needed to read Just Say No to Bad Relationships is perhaps an understatement. Though she wouldn’t have understood anyway.
Is This Love or Pathological Need?
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.” At various times in the book Wariner restates that the marriage is not a legal entity. Her mother is the second wife and of her husband was married in the polygamous sect only.
Wariner paints a vivid scene between her mother and mother’s parents, as her grandmother argues, with her daughter. “Makes me sick to think about all it. All those old men bringin’ so many little babies into the world.” She shook her head furiously. “All those little bastards runnin’ round all over the place with no one lookin after ’em–“
Procreation is the Goal Here
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 safety issues that plague the family.
The Need to Belong is Fundamental to Humans
As the story unfolds, the reader is drawn in with sympathy for the mother and her brood. And yet also to the conclusion that the sorrows and hardships the children face are created by their parents.
For me, one of the most poignant images of the entire story is Wariner’s mother reading a romance novel. She apparently did this frequently. The idea emerges in the reader’s mind that this woman felt that the only way she could get romantic love was part through her marriage. Desire for sexual love and romance is further suggested by the resentment of polygamous wives over where their husband visited on any given night.
If you’ve ever driven past a trailer park with derelict cars outside, and wondered how this happens, you might read this book. Of course, as Wariner notes in her talk above, everyone’s why is different. But, not one is exempt. All of us, in our little ways, have denied ourselves or others the basic decencies of life. Often, we’ve done this in defense of ideas and beliefs that we haven’t reflected on particularly deeply.
A Historical Document
I will not give details that would spoil the high drama of this memoir. This is because I believe this book is eminently worth you time spent reading. 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 is instructive. They do these things, they say, to rebel against “Babylon” (modern American values, such as TV, packaged breakfast cereal, and building codes). It is a deep study on human nature.
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.
If this is the case, it cannot be the only such thing. Which raises more questions than it answers.
