Sister Wife — John Gates

Brigham Bybee, introduced in John Gates's acclaimed Brigham's Day, has withdrawn from the routine practice of law and purchased Piute Villa, a motel in Kanab, Utah - not because he particularly wants to own a motel with a large, concrete tepee in the middle of the grounds but because he wants to be near the beautiful Zolene Swapp. Still, when the state approaches him, asking that he prosecute and imprison the most notorious polygamist in the area, T. Rampton Crowe, Brig accepts. It all seems easy enough.
Then Mercy confronts him. A runaway "plural wife" of Crowe's - one of six - Mercy's beaten, bloody, and terrified and tells a story of murder and mutilation within the colony from which she's fled. Bybee decides to change his tactics. He's going after Crowe for murder. The people who hired him, however, want one thing and one thing only: a show trial and conviction on the polygamy charges to prove, as the Olympics prepare to come to Utah, that the state won't put up with immoral and backward behavior. As Mercy begins to insinuate herself into his life, Brig finds Zolene slipping away and discovers just how far-reaching the hand of power can be. And how deadly.