Linda Wallheim Mystery

In the predominantly Mormon city of Draper, Utah, some seemingly perfect families have deadly secrets.Inspired by an actual crime and written by a practicing Mormon, The Bishop's Wife is both a fascinating look at the lives of modern Mormons and a grim and cunningly twisted mystery.Linda Wallheim is the mother of five grown boys and the wife of a Mormon bishop. As bishop, Kurt Wallheim is the ward's designated spiritual father, and that makes Linda the ward's unofficial mother whose days are filled with comfort visits, community service, and informal counseling.But Linda is increasingly troubled by the church's patriarchal structure and secrecy, especially as a disturbing situation takes shape in the ward. One cold winter morning, a neighbor, Jared Helm, appears on the Wallheims' doorstep with his five-year-old daughter, claiming that his wife, Carrie, disappeared in the middle of the night, leaving behind everything she owns. The circumstances surrounding Carrie's disappearance become more suspicious the more Linda learns about them, and she becomes convinced that Jared has murdered his wife and painted himself as an abandoned husband.Kurt asks Linda not to get involved in the unfolding family saga, but she has become obsessed with Carrie's fate-and with the well-being of her vulnerable young daughter. She cannot let the matter rest until she finds out the truth. Is she wrong to go against her husband, the bishop, when her inner convictions are so strong?

Linda Wallheim is the mother of five grown boys and the wife of a Mormon bishop in the heart of Utah. Linda's unofficial job as bishop's wife is to support her husband and act as the de facto mother to the ward. But when people of her ward are in danger, she cannot suppress her misgivings about the church's patriarchal structure and secrecy any longer. Once again pulling from the headlines, His Right Hand tackles an extremely contested topic within the Mormon community-transgenderism. Mormon bishop's wife Linda Wallheim fears for the safety of the people in her community when Karl Ashby, the ward's second counselor (the bishop's right-hand man), is found dead in an elaborately staged murder. Linda tries to console Karl's grieving children and wife, but matters are complicated when the autopsy reveals that Karl was a biological woman. Harrison's work continues to present us with a unique insider's glimpse into the lesser-known workings of the Mormon faith and community. Mette is steadily establishing her name in adult crime fiction as she attends conventions around the country.

The Mormon church may have disavowed the polygamy it became so famous for in the 19th century, but for some Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints, "plural marriage" isn't just ancient history. Mormon bishop's wife Linda Wallheim is stunned to learn her son Kenneth has gotten engaged to a young woman from a polygamous family. Naomi Carter may have left the religion she grew up in, but the Carters will still be the Wallheims' in-laws once Kenneth and Naomi are married. Stephen Carter, Naomi's father and the patriarch of the Carter clan, invites the Wallheims over to the Carter family compound in the remote foothills of the mountains outside Salt Lake City. Stephen Carter wishes to extend an olive branch to his future in-laws, and introduce them to his five wives and twenty-two children. But Linda suspects he also wants to try to persuade the Wallheims that his way of life is truly righteous. From Linda's point of view, polygamy is an abhorrent practice, one that dehumanizes women and makes children vulnerable to unhealthy family structures. She and her husband, Kurt, arrive at the Carter compound braced for trouble-Linda has her eyes peeled for signs that Stephen's wives and children are unhappy or abused. Although she can't find concrete evidence of mistreatment, Linda's gut instinct tells her that something on the Carter family compound is deeply wrong. She can't quite put her finger on what-until it's too late, and one of the family members is found murdered. Afraid that Stephen Carter's unworldly, sequestered wives and children might suffer at the hands of investigating police, Linda vows to stay at the compound until the murderer is found and the survivors are safe. But even if she manages to do more good than harm with her snooping and interfering, Linda can't unsee what she has seen during her time at the Carters'-now, confronting the legacy of polygamy in her own Mormon family raises even more questions about her already shaky faith.

Now that all five of her sons have left home, Mormon bishop's wife Linda Wallheim has quite a bit of time on her hands, most of which she spends worrying about the state of the country and how her youngest son, Samuel, who is openly gay, is faring on his mission in Boston. She has also become close with one of the women in her ward, Gwen Ferris. But Gwen is quickly losing faith in the church, and her issues with the Mormon power structure are only reinforced by her calling in Draper's local "Spanish ward." The ward's members are both legal and undocumented immigrants who aren't always getting the community support they should be from their church, and have been assigned a bishop who doesn't speak their language. When Gabriela Gonzalez, a young mother and Gwen's friend in the Spanish Ward, is found strangled at a gas station, Gwen is paralyzed with guilt. The dead woman's last phone call was to Gwen, and her voice mail reveals that she knew she was in danger. When Gwen decides the police aren't doing enough to get justice for Gabriela, who was undocumented, she decides to find the killer herself. Linda reluctantly takes part in Gwen's vigilante sleuthing, fearing for her young friend's safety, but what the pair discovers may put them both in danger.

In the wake of the #MeToo movement, has it become easier to speak out about sexual assault in religious communities? Linda Wallheim, who is increasingly jaded with the Mormon church, has begun marriage counseling with her bishop husband, Kurt, hoping to reconcile their household and philosophical disagreements. On other days, Linda occupies herself with happier things, like visits to see her five grown sons and their families. When Linda's eldest son, Joseph, tells her his infant daughter's babysitter, a local teenager named Sage Jensen, has vanished, Linda can't help but ask questions. Her casual inquiries form the portrait of a girl under extreme pressure from her parents to be the perfect Mormon daughter, and it eventually emerges that Sage is the victim of a terrible crime at the hands of her own classmates - including the high school's academic and athletic superstars. Linda's search for Sage will lead her to the darker streets of Utah and once again cause her to question whether the Mormon community's most privileged and powerful will be called to task for past sins.