The Fourth Wife

There must be a shift in the Zeitgeist of the publishing world, because after a long drought in Gothic novels, this is the second one I’ve encountered in little more than a month. The Fourth Wife (Kensington, 2026) takes place near Salt Lake City, Utah, during the years when the Mormon community there still practiced polygamy but was coming under increasing pressure from the US government to abandon the practice, pressure that included a law making multiple, simultaneous marriages a criminal offense.

It’s 1882. Twenty-year-old Hazel Russon, a talented pianist, has grown up in a polygamous family, but she has a secret agreement with her childhood friend Elijah Crowther that they will become each other’s only spouse once they are permitted to marry. When Elijah’s father, a powerful figure in Salt Lake City society, summons Hazel and informs her that Elijah has rejected her in favor of a return to the fundamental principles of Mormon life—the most fundamental of which is polygamy, known only as the Principle—she is shattered by her love’s betrayal. As a result, she allows Elder Crowther to talk her into becoming the fourth wife of Brother Jacob Manwaring, a wealthy older man who promises Hazel a home of her own, including a piano.

Hazel has long struggled with what most of us in the twenty-first century would categorize as an anxiety disorder, in part caused by the difficulty she has in meeting the extreme demands of her religion for female submissiveness. And although initially attracted to Jacob, she soon discovers that not everything Elder Crowder told her about her husband-to-be was the truth….

It’s all delightfully creepy and fast-paced, and the interactions among Jacob’s wives are even more interesting than those between them and Jacob.

Linda Hamilton studies and writes about nineteenth-century Mormon life as both a historian and a novelist—including, most recently, The Fourth Wife.

C. P. Lesley is the author of two historical fiction series set during the childhood of Ivan the Terrible and four other novels. Her next book, Song of the Silk Weaver, will appear in the summer of 2026.