Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer
hardcover 372 pages
published by Doubleday in October 2003
ISBN-13:  9780385509510

Type: {Airplane Read: makes time fly.}
Rating: {An Unputdownable: Couldn’t eat or sleep until I finished this book.}

Why You’re Reading It:

• You like to know the answers to the “why” questions
• You’re fascinated by cultures that are different than your own
• Morbid, maybe, but you find stories about murders interesting
• You think detailed investigative reporting is the frosting on the cake of a non-fiction subject

What I Thought: 

Keep in mind that I am a person who used to want to be a psychiatrist so that I could try to shine a light into criminal minds. That and/or Jodie Foster’s character in Silence of the Lambs. I was so sure if I could just talk to the people we all find so incredibly scary I could find out just why they acted like they did. I was fascinated. As I grew older and started realizing that these people were more scary than interesting, that dream faded and eventually became something I would be completely terrified to do. However, there is still a part of me that is intrigued by the working of the human mind, and wants to know how and why human beings are so complex – with the ability to be polar opposites of one another. So instead of inserting myself into a situation where I would have to meet a mass murderer, I read books and watch documentaries about these types of people instead. Murderers, extreme religious sects, notorious gangsters, or just individuals whose lives are completely different than mine draw me like a moth to a flame. I eat up their stories and want to know more, more, more. (And then I get so scared that I can’t sleep and berate myself for reading/ watching these kinds of stories. This particular book is not scary, however.)

Under the Banner of Heaven was like a long, cool drink of water in this forementioned arena. I flew through this book that investigates the Mormon church and the Fundamentalist Mormons that came from it. Krakauer uses the story of Dan and Ron Lafferty, brothers who murdered their sister-in-law and their one year old niece as “commanded to them by God”, as a jumping off point. But he travels back through the history of Mormonism to help us figure out where these men got their ideas of justice from. While exploring this religion, he delves into a few others as well (though very briefly), and at the end he shares that he is not a religious man; a note that probably wasn’t needed as it’s obvious throughout that he does not hold religion in a high regard. I, however, didn’t read this book hoping that Krakauer would esteem one religion over another; I read it because I wanted to know the nitty-gritty of some of these fundamentalists and I wanted to hear this crazy story about these two disturbed men. I got exactly what I was looking for.

Throughout the book I found myself covering my mouth, clenching my toes, and exclaiming “No way! He/They/ That is CRAZY!” to no one in particular. The entire book can be read for shock factor alone, and contains stories about situations I don’t often like to read about (rape, detailed violence scenes, incest), but somehow never made me consider putting this book down. Whether it was someone’s 75 wives, or another person who married their 14 year-old to her uncle, or even just reading what Dan Lafferty thought was normal, the stories in this book made me feel as if I was sitting around with buddies saying, “I can top that, did you hear about this one?!” And although there was a chapter and a half towards the end that I questioned the necessity of needing to be part of the book (it seemed like Krakauer had too much information and just wanted to make sure it got in the book) it didn’t take away from the fact that this was a compulsive, addicting read for me.

And for anyone who wonders if it is disrespectful to religion in general or Mormons in particular, I would say not. I’m not about to judge Mormon’s because they had/have crazies in their midst just like I don’t think mothers are evil because some have killed their children in the past. It would be preposterous to do so. What wouldn’t be preposterous is to grab this book, a tall glass of iced tea and head out to your back porch for some shut-your-mouth/oh-no-he-didn’t reading time.

(This review is in no way meant to be disrespectful to the memory of Brenda Lafferty and her daughter nor the hundreds of people abused in fundamentalist homes every year. Krakauer does a wonderful job of paying tribute to and honoring them).