Early in 2006, my wife, Joyce, who’s helped me write numerous books, began suggesting that I look into Mormon fundamentalist and fugitive Warren Jeffs. He was about to land on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list and his picture had begun appearing everywhere in the media and across the Southwest. His story was not unfamiliar to me. More than twenty years earlier, I’d started writing about the intersection of religion and violence after Alan Berg, an outspoken Jewish talk show host in Denver, had been assassinated in 1984 by neo-Nazis. My book on this murder, Talked to Death, described what occurs when fanatical faith meets terrorism, a topic that had only become larger and more troubling since the mid-1980s. By 2006, it had grown into the largest political-religious story in the world. But I initially resisted Joyce’s suggestion about Warren Jeffs.
Three years earlier, Jon Krakauer had published his excellent book about the Mormon faith in Under the Banner of Heaven. I didn’t want to walk over that ground again and didn’t know if there were other pieces of the Fundamentalist Mormon saga still to be covered. After more persuasion from my wife, we got in the car that spring and drove to southern Utah; I was immediately taken by the beauty and grandeur of the landscape around Zion National Park, the perfect setting for a spiritual war. The first person I interviewed was Elaine Tyler, who ran the Hope Organization, which provided assistance to women and teenagers who’d escaped Jeffs’ reign of terror and the fundamentalist town of Colorado City, Arizona. She labored tirelessly for these people for 50 or 60 hours a week and sometimes longer -- for free. If you couldn’t sense her heart at work inside the Hope Organization, a piece of you was missing.
She introduced me to other people who were trying to contain or undo parts of the damage Jeffs and his church had done to former members of the congregation. Some were employed by local or state government, but others, like Elaine, were volunteers. In their own ways, all of these people were fighting against religious terrorism, but with a very different strategy from the one our federal government was employing abroad. No blood was being shed along the border of southern Utah and northern Arizona, but change was gradually coming to the region. Small victories were showing up and lives were moving forward. After too much neglect for far too long, the two states were finally starting to use the legal system in appropriate ways to a hidden corner of America. Abuses were being prosecuted and criminals brought to justice.
Through Elaine, I met women who’d been sexually assaulted as children or forced into underage marriages, but they’d found the courage to flee their religious background and start over. They too were assisting other women or teenagers trying to break free. The more I listened to them -- and began to understand what they’d lived through and were trying to accomplish now -- the more I was moved. Their passion and commitment were all about the heart, and their efforts were largely un-documented. They made up the backbone of the movement to bring Jeffs down and lend a hand to his victims.
My wife’s instincts were on target; what was happening in Utah and Arizona struck me as definitely worth writing about. Those involved in this story seemed to be looking for something in the same way I was, even if they never said that or took credit for their achievements. They didn’t need to say it; every time I went down to the Utah-Arizona border for more research and interviews, I felt better about the native strength and goodness of my country. The individual stories were important but another, larger theme had begun to emerge. It had to do with the value of intelligence and restraint in confronting criminal behavior driven by religion -- as opposed to launching a broad-based war and then trying to deal with the costly effects of that later on. Maybe blind force wasn’t the best way to convince others that our way was right. Maybe those working along the border had something to teach all of us.
As I learned when I was young, it’s very easy to criticize our government, which is bound to make mistakes as it tries to solve complex problems. But every now and then, those in charge come close to acting out the wisdom behind the principles that created the United States. In doing so, they honor the Founding Fathers and our Constitutional heritage, and they give us hope and the chance to think about what power is and the best way to use it.
I believe that heroes step forward in the pages of this book, and we’ve never needed them more.