Review by Gary Boynton:
Some of the best books in the true crime genre are those, which use a crime or series of crimes as an entry point into a bigger story. This can be an examination of a particular geographical or sociological setting; of social issues involving race, class, or gender; of an historical era; or of a subculture. Under the Banner of Heaven falls nicely into both the first and last categories.
Krakauer adroitly uses the story of two brothers, Dan and Ron Lafferty, who killed their sister-in-law and her young daughter, as a way to examine both the Mormon Fundamentalism that inspired the murderers and the nature of religious belief itself. After drawing the reader in with a riveting account of the murders, he takes us on a guided tour of the polygamist colonies that produced the killers and then traces the history of the beliefs they hold. He concludes by exploring the nature of religious belief, especially in its most fanatical forms.
As a true crime story, Under the Banner of Heaven is more of a whydunnit than a whodunnit. The perpetrators are revealed at the beginning and there isn’t a great deal of detail about the investigation of the two homicides. But it is still an interesting case because of the motives for the crimes and the mindset of the killers.
Krakauer’s reporting on the scope and nature of the polygamy sects is richly detailed and made personal through the stories of some of the women who fled the bonds of multi-wife marriages. Many of these polygamous relationships begin when the wives are in their early teens, and there is often physical, emotional, and sexual abuse involved.
Krakauer’s history of Mormonism is, for the most-part, equally interesting and revealing, although he gets a bit bogged down while discussing some of the particular battles between Mormon settlers and their “gentile” enemies, including the U.S. government.
The sections of the book that deal with the nature of religious belief, especially of the fanatical kind, are thoughtfully presented and fit in nicely with the overall narrative. Under the Banner of Heaven is far from the anti-Mormon diatribe that the church’s hierarchy has tried to paint it as.
Krakauer has made a serious contribution to our understanding of a part of America that few Americans know much about.