{"id":23518,"date":"2013-10-20T03:24:24","date_gmt":"2013-10-20T09:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=23518"},"modified":"2013-10-19T23:46:17","modified_gmt":"2013-10-20T05:46:17","slug":"miah-arnolds-sweet-land-of-bigamy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/miah-arnolds-sweet-land-of-bigamy\/","title":{"rendered":"Miah Arnold’s Sweet Land of Bigamy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"sweetlandofbigamy\"<\/a>The title, sadly, does not adequately convey the richness of language and wit to be found in this charming first novel by Dr. Miah Arnold, who grew up in a house attached to the Three-Legged Dog Saloon in Myton, Utah, and now is assistant professor of English and Rhetoric, Creative Writing at Georgia College & State University.<\/p>\n

But it does reveal just a bit of this black comedy\u2019s plot, a story told from the perspective of a variety of quirky and engaging characters.<\/p>\n

Set in our once and future polygamous state, the book features the rather ditsy main protagonist Helen Motes, who indeed winds up a bigamist after staid husband Larry heads off to Iraq on a contract mission from their Houston home to utilize the Arabic language skills he learned for a Church mission to Egypt. Motes returns to her tiny rural hometown where she is pursued by and ultimately marries a young Eastern Indian poet in a blissfully romantic mountaintop ceremony performed by a ridiculously funny Hindu priest while Helen is clad in a scarlet sari held together by 17 safety pins. Problem is, she hasn\u2019t told the exotic Chakor Desai, who arrives for his wedding on a white steed draped in strands of orange marigolds (and is mistaken by a local for a terrorist), that she already has a husband. The choice Helen faces when Larry returns unexpectedly from Iraq provides edge and drama to this otherwise lighthearted but engrossing tale, beautifully written and filled with arresting imagery.<\/div>\n

Helen returned home in hopes of making amends with her ill mother, a lifelong alcoholic who made her childhood a misery but whose love of her daughter shines through the narrative. The continuing friction between the two is a story element in and of itself and plays against the subplot of Chakor\u2019s dying mother in India, where he spends much of the book communicating with his bride by e-mail.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a refreshing and original story, about flawed but relatable characters placed in highly unusual situations that ultimately make a sort of sense. Once you are engaged with them, it\u2019s hard to put this novel novel down.<\/p>\n

Miah Arnold’s Sweet <\/em>Land of Bigamy is a finalist for the 2013 15 Bytes Book Award in Fiction. Arnold is the daughter of Lou Arnold and the late Helen Forsberg, veteran arts writer and dance critic for <\/em>The Salt Lake Tribune. She studied history at Carleton College, and earned a Ph. D. in writing and literature at the University of Houston. She teaches adults and children throughout Houston in University and nonprofit settings. Read more about the author at miaharnold.com<\/a>.
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The title, sadly, does not adequately convey the richness of language and wit to be found in this charming first novel by Dr. Miah Arnold, who grew up in a house attached to the Three-Legged Dog Saloon in Myton, Utah, and now is assistant professor of English and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":844,"featured_media":23519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,35],"tags":[1710,1708,1709],"class_list":["post-23518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-bytes","category-literary-arts","tag-15-bytes-book-awards","tag-by-ann-poor","tag-miah-arnold"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/sweetlandofbigamy.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-24 17:30:34","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/844"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23518"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23521,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23518\/revisions\/23521"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}