• About this Book
• About the Author
• Related Links
• Reader's Guide

Written by Jon Krakauer

• Format: Hardcover, 400 pages
 
• Publisher: Doubleday
• On Sale: July 15, 2003
• Price: $30.00
• ISBN: 978-0-385-50951-0 (0-385-50951-0)

about this book

**ALA Notable Book, 2003

Krakauer’s previous books have given insight into lives conducted at the outer limits. In Under the Banner of Heaven, he shifts his focus from the extremes of physical adventure to the extremes of religious fundamentalism within American culture.

At the core of Under the Banner of Heaven is a double murder committed by two Mormon Fundamentalist brothers, Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a revelation from God commanding them to kill their blameless victims. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this “divinely inspired” crime, Krakauer constructs a multilayered narrative of messianic delusion, violence, polygamy, and unyielding faith. Along the way, he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest-growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.

Krakauer takes readers inside isolated communities in the American West, Canada, and Mexico, where some forty-thousand Mormon Fundamentalists believe the mainstream Mormon Church went unforgivably astray when it renounced polygamy. Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the leaders of these outlaw sects are zealots who portend to answer only to God. Marrying prodigiously and with virtual impunity (the leader of the largest fundamentalist church took seventy-five “plural wives,” several of whom were wed to him when they were fourteen or fifteen and he was in his eighties), fundamentalist prophets exercise absolute control over the lives of their followers, and preach apocalyptic visions of an impending hurricane of fire, sparing only their most obedient adherents.

Weaving the story of the Lafferty brothers and their fanatical brethren with a clear-eyed look at Mormonism’s violent past, Krakauer examines the underbelly of the most successful homegrown faith in the United States, and finds a distinctly American brand of religious extremism. The result is an utterly compelling work of nonfiction that illuminates both an otherwise confounding aspect of American culture and dark realm of human behavior.

“…by setting Mormon fundamentalism in its historical and scriptural context, and by powerfully illuminating Dan Lafferty’s mind, Krakauer provides enough raw material for a seminar on post-9/11 questions. What drives people toward fundamentalism, and then toward violence? Where is the line between religious fanaticism and insanity? How heavy is the influence of religious history, in particular scripture, as opposed to the material conditions of material life?....Under the Banner of Heaven is an arresting portrait of depravity that may have broader relevance than the author intended.”
—The New York Times Book Review